The Game of God: Day 156 - part 1
Ichabod Adventures
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Warnings at the end.
— Day 156 —
Castiel had no intention of falling asleep, but he must have at some point; a shock of burning pain from his arm awakens him.
Feeling heavy and awkward, he rolls off it, waiting out the excruciatingly slow burn, like a slow drip of diluted acid in his veins. When it’s finally died down to a slow, heavy throb, he drops back onto the mattress, resting his arm on the pillow above his head and looking up at the ceiling.
It’s much closer than it should be, he finally decides uncertainly. And seems to be closer still, with every moment that passes.
Sitting up takes far, far too much effort, muscles fighting him blindly, and he has to look for a short eternity at the wall, trying to work out what’s wrong; it’s the doors to the balcony. They’re gone. So are the windows, he realizes, feeling his breath speeding up, and the bathroom door, and the walls are closer, far closer, the bags that were set against the far wall are now only feet away and the door into the hall is…
Before the far wall can come closer (and take the door), Castiel is running through it, ducking to avoid hitting his head despite the fact it can’t have grown smaller. The hall’s no better, however; it’s barely shoulder width and soon won’t be even that.
Don’t panic, someone says like a suggestion he learn to breathe water.
Turning away from that narrow (narrowing) hall that won’t be shoulder wide, he forces himself to go right, past the terrible marble office and to the back stairs, slamming through the (too small) door to confront stairs barely wide enough for his foot, and when he turns around, there’s no door at all. He’s in a concrete box and can’t get out, a box, a coffin, a body that won’t move.
Visualization exercises, someone once told him (who was that stupid?): close your eyes, imagine a wide open field, there is no door and no stairs and only me and I can’t get out; if he had a gun, he would shoot himself; if he could move, he would beat his head against the floor until he was dead, he’ll kill anyone who tries to stop him, I can’t move let me out why did you do this let me go.
He can barely feel, distant and unreal and wrong, a gentle hand on his head. I’m sorry, son. Never would have done it if I’d known.
He feels his hands clench into fists at his side and his eyes close; the memory of that gentle touch is so fresh he can smell motor oil and sweat and flannel and gunpowder. Calm down now, boy; we’ll fix this.
Impossible, he would have said if he could think or talk or move or breathe; he’s glad he didn’t, since as it turns out, that was a lie. So many things are, and the best lies are those that are true.
Keeping his eyes closed, Castiel thinks of stairs, wide and deep, burrowing down into solid concrete, builds them as quickly as he can in this moment that he can think; calm down, don’t panic, we’ll fix this.
Try again.
When he opens his eyes, there’s a stairwell, concrete stairs marching downward with a bright green metal rail, as freshly painted as if it’d been done hours before. Turning around, he sees there’s no door, but it’s only the work of a moment to return it, glass with a view to a correctly proportioned hall (it was probably metal, but he needs the reassurance right now).
Facing the stairs again, he debates whether to descend or return to his room (a very good lie, but much like this one, not true at all); he selects the stairs, if for no other reason than curiosity. When he reaches the bottom floor, the narrow hall—barely room to squeeze through—resists only for a moment before widening obligingly before him, and distantly—feet or miles or the length light travels in a year—he sees a spill of yellow-white light onto the floor from the mess, hears the murmur of conversation, and suspects the party’s proceeding very, very well.
Pacing down the corridor past endless doors, Castiel clings to his visualization of a wide hall; distance he can deal with, patience is a virtue and he’s had (eons of) practice, but not corridors only half as wide as his shoulders.
That doesn’t make it less boring, however.
The mess doorway (very wide, very tall, no doors or hinges at all) yawns open before him, and Castiel pauses in the pool of warm light to observe the expected progress of a Chitaqua celebration following a death.
The tables have been pushed back against the walls in some areas to make room for various groups on blankets, exchanging shots and quiet conversation; David is sitting against the western wall, Melanie’s head in his lap as they talk quietly, Liz asleep with her head on Melanie’s stomach and legs stretched across Daniel. Zoe’s groupies (he blames Dean for that term) are in a corner, looking moody in her absence and only slightly stoned; he can’t say it’s celebratory, but the tense, silent grief seems to have finally found expression and begun to ease. A bright laugh from the far side of the room captures his attention, and in one corner of his mind, he recognizes a poker game in progress at one of the tables, Vera, Jody, Phil, Amanda, and Rob surrounding the table and all looking very competitively drunk indeed. To his surprise, Carol is in the far corner, ensconced in a much better armchair, bandaged leg elevated on a footstool, with Kyle and Kat in attendance.
Even their recruits are here; Haruhi’s team with Christina’s, Haruhi appropriating a very willing Derek’s lap and talking with Rosario and Sidney while Henry and Victoria trade drinks with Brenda and Sheila. Even Sean’s moodiness (either the lack of Zack or three days of his team’s constant company or both) seems lightened as he gestures expansively (he’s also somewhat drunk) in relating something that must be dramatic if Travis and Martin’s expressions are any indication.
In the center of the room is a worn armchair, and sunk into the threadbare, stained cushions is a man, sipping from a glass of whiskey, one leg draped over an arm that the stuffing is fighting (and winning) to escape.
Then the green eyes fix on him.
(Castiel catches movement from the corner of his eye; Mel sitting up, Christina’s head turning from her place among several of those talking quietly, Sean’s attention distracted from his drink, Sarah looking up, Amanda straightening, Vera stilling—all are looking at him.)
The man smiles. “Look at you. Last time I saw you, you were looking pretty rough.”
(Mel lies back down; Christina and Sarah return to their conversations; Sean takes a drink; Vera and Sarah pick up their cards: like nothing happened at all.)
“I’d just done a great deal of fighting,” Castiel answers, toes just brushing against the threshold of the room; behind him, the hall is gone and so are the doors. He can’t concentrate on them right now; at this moment, standing in this wide doorway to this large, airy, window-filled room, it’s all he can do not to go inside. “Where have you been?”
“Around,” he answers vaguely, taking another drink, glass briefly flashing metal before it’s glass once again. Turning it slowly in his hand, he cocks his head. “You gonna hold up the doorway all night? It doesn’t need it.”
Castiel looks up at the distant frame of the door; no, he supposes it most definitely does not. Where there was a hallway there’s now a wall on either side, solid concrete as thick as a world, and he can feel the wall behind him stop just short of his back. The walls, as it were, are closing in.
“Come on in,” the man says invitingly. “Have a drink.”
Castiel wishes he could nail his feet to the floor, but if he concentrates on that, he’ll move and make it very pointless. “No.”
The man lowers his glass with a frown.
(Mel sits up, Christina and Sean turn their heads, Sarah looks up, Amanda straightens, Vera stills—They’re all looking at him.)
“Why?” the man asks over the rim of his still-full glass. The walls on either side are inches from his shoulder, and the one behind him is pressed to his back as the doorway before him grows curiously narrower.
“Who are you?”
(They all move closer without moving at all.)
“You know who I am, Cas, come on,” the man says, and the glass flashes to a knife and back again. “I’m me. Who else would I be?”
“Tell me your name, then.”
The man slumps more deeply into his chair with a smirk. “You know my name.”
“Do you?”
The smirk fixes, and everything seems to stop; then he shakes his head.
“Why does it matter?” the man asks with a teasing smile, green eyes alight. “You always come to me in the end anyway.”
(They’re half-way to the doorway.)
The doorway is half the size it was. The walls are pressing against his shoulders, his back, the ceiling is almost to his head: a box, a coffin, a body, stop.
(They’re almost to the doorway and the doorway almost isn’t here at all.)
He’s trapped in a concrete box; he can’t move and he can’t breathe, but there’s a way out.
“Cas,” the man says softly, “stop fighting me; you won’t win and dude, you don’t even want to.” His voice hardens. “Come here. Now.”
Castiel steps into the room from the concrete box, onto red stone that shifts beneath his socked feet. Mel is in David’s lap, Christina is talking, Sean is drinking, Sarah is sitting, Vera and Amanda are playing cards.
Seated in the iron chair, Dean puts down his glass with a welcoming smile. “There we go,” he says softly. “You look tired. I can help with that.”
He is tired. It chases you, you see, and sometimes, it catches up. It’s easy to go into his arms, curl up in his lap, tuck his head down on his shoulder, not think at all. Dean’s arm tightens around his waist, fingers sliding beneath the edge of his shirt and edge of his sweatpants to close possessively over his hip.
Leaning over, Dean picks up the glass and holds it to his lips; whiskey has always been his preferred choice, another thing that Dean taught him.
“That’s it,” Dean says approvingly when he drinks it all, lifting it to his own mouth still-full. “How you feeling? Better?”
He nods; he does.
When Dean lowers the glass again, it’s a knife. The hilt is wrapped in blood-stained leather shaped to Dean’s hand; the blade shines in the dim light, thick with rust, and clotted with old blood and dripping fresh and new; it’s formed of Dean’s screams on the rack. “When did you get that?”
Dean flips it idly, catching it across the length of the blade to the tip before the handle is pressed against his palm again. “I’ve always carried it. Almost forgot it was there.”
Across the metal of the blade is etched in Dean’s own pain: this is my name.
Then Dean’s eyes focus on something else; Mel sits up; Christina and Sean turn their heads; Sarah looks up, Amanda straightens; Vera stills; Castiel follows Dean’s gaze to the doorway, miles wide and tall, and sees what is without.
It’s dark outside; before he added the lights to Chitaqua’s paths, moonless nights always were. That’s why they chose it, of course, but a clear night was a mistake. Dean was the only one who knew how well he shot with his left hand, how quickly he could calculate trajectory, and that he didn’t need more than the stars to see; Alpheratz was ten degrees from midpoint that night.
“They thought it would be easy, I suppose,” Castiel whispers. “Two windows and a door, all in line of sight.”
He marks twenty-one faces; those he could see clearly, the vague ovals of those he couldn’t see well enough, but none of those he couldn’t see at all and could never count. He could hear everything, however; each pair of boots on fall-withered grass and bare dirt; each stuttered, rapid breath; the click of the safety of each weapon.
That, he could count.
“How many?” Dean murmurs, and Mel and Christina, Sean and Sarah, Vera and Amanda surround the chair. “It wasn’t twenty-one, was it? You knew it was more.”
He did; he didn’t want to; if he thought about it, he’d never sleep again; he can’t forget, but all he has to do is not think of it at all.
More appear, spreading out nameless and faceless, one for each click of the safety on each gun. When the last click ends, he asks, “Why do you want to know?”
Stop fighting me; you won’t win.
“I’m going to kill them for you.” Tipping Castiel’s chin up, he kisses him, slow, tasting of blood not yet shed. When Castiel looks again, more faces appear; some he thinks were among the crowd on Third on New Year’s Eve, others he recognizes from Ichabod’s mess. “And you’re gonna watch me do it. You’ll love it, promise.”
You don’t even want to.
Castiel nods dreamily, settling his head back on Dean’s shoulder. “As you wish.”
Castiel takes a deep breath, looking into Dean’s worried face in the light of the lamp on the other side of the bed. He can feel the hand on his shoulder, each individual finger, the warmth of his skin, the concern in the green eyes; he can also see the ceiling where it should be above his bed.
“Cas?” Dean asks in a way that suggests it’s become a refrain. “Are you—”
Sitting up, Castiel verifies the balcony doors are fine, the curtain revealing a slice of Ichabod outside. After checking for windows (present), walls (in their correct places), and both doors (also in their correct places), he lies back down, surprised to hear the hitch in his breath.
He doesn’t think he ever coveted the ability to dream (or rather, remember doing it), but he must admit he was curious; he could have lived with curiosity if this is what humans experience every time they shut their eyes.
“Cas—” Dean starts with the disciplined calm that precedes a massive explosion that ends in shattered psyches and some truly disturbing stories about what the Watch experienced that one night.
“I’m fine,” he interrupts, reaching for Dean’s arm before he can get up and teach everyone the meaning of fear (Dean Edition, Unabridged). There’s a vague sense of burning from his arm and what feels like a continuation of the earlier headache picking up where it left off, but he welcomes both; they aren’t a shrinking room, concrete box, or… the mess.
Dean seems startled for a moment before catching Castiel’s hand as he withdraws it, palms very warm; as it was very cold, that’s perfectly acceptable.
“Bad dream,” he says truthfully, frowning at Dean. “If I’ve ever given you the impression I want you to…”
Dean cocks his head. “What?”
“Kill people for me,” he says in a rush. “I don’t.”
He has no idea how he’s supposed to interpret that expression. “Was I… ruling the Pit?”
“No,” he assures him. “Nothing like that. It was on earth.”
Dean ponders that for an excessive amount of time. “Dean?”
“Give me a minute,” he says. “Trying to decide if this is better. Demon, assassin—look, your subconscious, what can you do, but any chance a dream with me, I don’t know, taking you to a movie or something—anything—that doesn’t involve me doing lots of murder?”
“It didn’t get that far,” he explains. “You woke me up before the presumed mass murder.”
“Mass murderer, should have known,” Dean says thoughtfully. “Is it just me or is there a theme here.”
“It wasn’t you.” He shakes his head at Dean’s incredulous expression. “It wasn’t. I mean,” he corrects himself to avoid what will be Dean’s next thought, “it wasn’t either of you.”
“Just what, looked like me?”
“I suppose,” Castiel agrees uncertainly, trying to remember. “He was nothing like you, however. Also, someone Kat-shaped was being very pleasant to an equally pleasant Carol-shape and Kyle-shape, and no one was intoxicated at all despite the amount of alcohol that was being consumed. It was a room of vaguely-familiar pod people whose only distinction was being far more boring and somewhat uncomfortably predatory. Are dreams always so…”
“Oh yeah. Sometimes,” Dean says, “you’re also naked and reciting goddamn Romeo and Juliet to every English class you were ever in. And they all look like Dad.”
“I prefer the one I had,” he says, unable to suppress the shudder at the thought of John Winchester glaring at him from every direction. Possibly aware of what Castiel is doing with his son, even.
“Yeah, I’m liking yours better, now that I think about it,” Dean agrees, mouth quirking. “Though seriously, try for a nice, bloodless movie night, no one dies or tortures anyone else. Something less realistic, is what I’m saying. Pure fantasy.”
“We have movie nights,” Castiel protests. “In our living room. I enjoy them very much.” He starts to elaborate on that when he realizes something. “I thought you weren’t returning until morning. Did you find Micah?”
Dean’s hands tighten around his fingers, making a very tight but very warm cocoon; provided he breaks nothing important, Castiel can’t complain. Any moment now, he may be able to feel his fingers again.
“No,” Dean starts, looking at some point near his right shoulder. “I—uh. Came back.”
Dean is sitting very close and is, he knows, an excellent source of heat. There must be some convenient way to access more of it than he’s receiving via Dean’s (very warm) hands, but the how escapes him. He suspects it’s very obvious, and also suspects at this moment he’s not at his best. Endlessly running through increasingly narrow halls and being trapped in tiny concrete rooms probably explains that, he supposes distantly. Even ones that only exist in one’s mind.
“Joe took over, was probably glad to get rid of me…” Dean trails off, looking down at their hands as if they’re supposed to continue that sentence for him. Then he says, “Cas, are you okay?”
“I don’t like dreaming.” Focusing on Dean’s face, he asks the first thing that he can think of. “Did you happen to go by the mess before coming up here?”
Dean suddenly looks guilty. “Yeah, I did,” he says in the same tone one might admit to visiting a crack den or being in the bed of a person not one’s partner without their knowledge or consent or perhaps, Spartacus’s army before running away just as the crucifixions began. Something like that. “I was just checking in, making sure the kids were…”
“Not comatose from alcohol poisoning,” he finishes, nodding; that is not an unreasonable concern. “How are they?”
“Drunk or trying their damndest.”
Castiel sits up, shoving a pillow behind his back and trying not to watch the walls or the ceiling. “Dean—”
“I was out of line earlier,” Dean says quickly, almost like he’s just remembered a speech he’s been working on for some time (about four hours, give or take). “I shouldn’t have said—well, any of it. And I shouldn’t have left like that.” The green eyes meet his without flinching, but nothing about him isn’t braced for a blow. “So how badly did I fuck up?”
Castiel searches for the earlier anger, but the freshness is gone, stripped of its heat. All that’s left is unformed dissatisfaction, an uncomfortable heaviness in his chest that becomes much worse when he looks at Dean, a strong desire to justify himself (again) and make Dean admit (line by line) that he was right, but inexplicably, there’s an even stronger one to do something—anything—so Dean doesn’t look like that.
It’s so strange; there was a time the anger never stopped, until he forgot he even felt it, clutching it so tightly he couldn’t even remember what it felt like to let it go. He can think of a dozen potential responses calculated to leave wounds that could be years in the healing, drive Dean Winchester from his presence as he did countless times for no better reason than he could. He used to enjoy it. Dean is vulnerable in ways that his predecessor wasn’t; he could be subtle and careful and far, far more cruel. He could inflict wounds that would never heal at all. And unlike his predecessor, Dean would let him.
He could disembowel himself as well, and that at least has the advantage of hurting only himself. And be far more enjoyable.
“Just tell me,” Dean says roughly, and it’s only Castiel that would ever be able to hear the minute break in his voice. “Dude, say anything you want here. I sure as hell deserve it.”
“Nothing happened that can’t be mended with discussion, and sufficient groveling, of course,” he answers distractedly, not looking at the windows or the doors. The half-life of a benzo is usually three to five hours, and he can feel the walls not-closing, the ceiling not-lowering, the windows staying very well indeed.
Abruptly, Dean moves closer, warm hand tilting up his face, green eyes searching, and the hand holding his shifts, thumb pressing against his pulse. “What’s going on? You okay?”
The most ridiculous part of it all; he can deal with experiencing it and even Vera knowing it, but he cannot and has never been able to talk about it. It’s maddening, like saying words to frame the experience will make them true; that it’s not just in his own mind that it is happening. He’s never worked out why; if he’s afraid he’ll be told it’s real, or that it’s real and they’ll lie and say it’s not. To protect him, like a child, like a pet, like a dog on a leash…
“Fuck,” Dean breathes at the spike in his heart-rate and straightening, he looks at the balcony doors, the slice of the world outside the open curtain, then back to Castiel. “Right, give me a second, okay?”
Castiel wonders what that’s supposed to mean, but Dean stands up, stripping off his flannel and wrapping it around Castiel’s shoulders (why?) before abruptly dragging all the bedding off the bed.
“Dean?” Dragging up his legs, he watches incredulously as Dean goes to the balcony doors and opens them to expose the room to what feels very much like the early stages of an ice age. “What are you—”
“It’s fine, stopped snowing,” Dean reassures him, stepping outside with a hiss in nothing but his thermal and undershirt and stomping around. “Could really use a goddamn broom, but this’ll work. No wind.”
“Work for what?”
Coming back inside, Dean looks at him patiently before picking up (with an effort) the masses of blankets and sheets and goes back outside.
“Grab the pillows,” he calls out, and Castiel does on sheer inability to think of anything else to do. Going to the doorway, he sees Dean spread sheet and quilt (for value of ‘spread’ when it’s more a bunched mass of material. Looking up, Dean reaches out a peremptory hand. “Give me those.” When he does (he can’t think of why he shouldn’t), Dean arranges the pillows to his satisfaction and sits down, looking at Castiel expectantly. “Sit down,” he clarifies, patting the space between his thighs. “Hurry, it’s kind of cold.”
It occurs to him Dean may very well be a genius. “Yes,” he answers vaguely, joining Dean on the blanket. “I’ll do that.”
In only moments, he finds himself in what is inarguably among the best places he’s ever been in all his existence: tucked against Dean’s chest and between his legs, in a nest of blankets beneath the entire sky. When he regains blood flow and his teeth stop chattering, he may even comment to that effect, but that would take important time from simply being. Tucking his head against Dean’s neck and almost beneath the edge of the thick bedspread and other quilt, he feels Dean’s fingers loosely circle his wrist, thumb sliding down along his pulse point, but far more important (at the moment) is a brush against his hair, a breath of warmth.
Drawing up his knees more closely, he concentrates on the feel of fresh (icy) air and the body-warmth of Dean’s flannel that smells like him: Chitaqua’s detergent is almost lost beneath a hint of sweat and snow and cold and whiskey (of course), Ichabod’s soap, and the rich, faintly musky scent that’s a hundred different things that make up Dean. He would find it everywhere before, but now it’s saturated their clothes in the shared drawers, the sheets on their beds both here and at home, even his own skin from Dean’s touch or his mouth or wallowing with him in bed.
Breathing him in, Castiel settles himself; if he doesn’t do this now, he never will. “Is my commander available by any chance?”
He feels Dean stiffen before deliberately relaxing. “I beat him to death, why?”
He should have guessed, yes. “And my partner?”
“Left him for you,” Dean answers, voice not entirely steady. “Anyone ever tell you he’s a dick? You could do better.”
He opens his mouth and an unexpected laugh erupts, pressing his forehead against the stubble-scratch of Dean’s jaw: how ridiculous and terribly distracting. “Could you resurrect my commander? I need to—I need to explain.”
“You got nothing to explain,” Dean says, certainty and guilt so mixed there’s no way to tell where one ends and one begins. “Especially to him.”
“I would tell my partner,” he says, ruthlessly suppressing the urge to laugh. “But right now, I suspect he’d agree with anything I said, no matter how inane, including the steps by which I could disembowel him.”
It’s such a novel thought, almost impossible to believe is true; then again, Dean is always impossible.
“Please. I need to explain, and consider it incumbent on you to listen for reasons, insert any you like, provided you do it.”
Dean doesn’t answer for a moment, but he knows Dean’s body; he’d deny him nothing right now, but he takes the time to brace himself for what he might hear. “Yeah. Go ahead.”
“We found Bobby’s body a week after he died.” He keeps his eyes closed, concentrating on the warmth of Dean’s flannel to steady himself. “It might have been as much as ten days, it was unseasonably cold, and…” That part’s not important. “We brought him back to Chitaqua to burn.”
Dean nods, a light pressure against his hair.
“I didn’t ask why we did that,” he continues. “No matter who it was or what they seemed to die of, they’d be burned where they were. It was practical; Croatoan can survive so long, it’s practically immortal unless consumed in salt and fire. Even at Alpha, among our own hunters, suspected Croat didn’t enter the walls again as anything but ashes: outsiders, no matter how familiar, no matter their method of death, never.”
“Makes sense,” Dean offers in something very like his normal voice. Then, “Son of a bitch, that’s why you didn’t want to bring the team leaders back to Chitaqua?” He slumps back against the pillows, letting out a breath. “I didn’t even think there might be a reason you didn’t. No wonder you were pissed at me all the time—did I do that a lot back then?”
Castiel is momentarily struck dumb by how many contradictory answers he has to that question in general, and it’s almost a relief to realize he could simply confine his answer to the specific.
“No, that’s not the reason. You were right, which had already quickly become annoying, if you’re curious. Bobby was the first we brought to Chitaqua to burn, but not the last; no matter their manner of death, no matter the suspicion of Croatoan, no matter how long it took to find them, we brought our hunters home to burn.” He swallows. “I never asked why we instituted that policy in direct contradiction to that Dean established at Alpha; I never even questioned it, or even thought about it. I helped Dean instruct and drill everyone in the precautions until they were reflexive; we retrieved the bodies, prepared them as best we could considering their state, those who wished to were allowed to view them, and at dusk, everyone gathered together and we burned them. Dean never explained, of course, but in this case, it was simply because we both knew why.”
Dean remains silent, and he wonders what he’s thinking. He gives himself a moment (to brace himself) then sits up, immediately pulling the flannel closer against the chill as he looks at Dean. “If Ichabod hadn’t shared that tradition—if they did things a different way—I would have respected that, of course. They don’t, however; the only deterrent for them isn’t the risk, but what is possible.”
Dean catches his breath. “That’s why you went out there.”
“Croatoans weren’t the problem—or at least, less of one, and I suspect Ichabod’s patrol would have already been planning how to get them if not for one other thing they can’t hope to fight and win. I can count the number of humans on one hand who have successfully killed a Hellhound and survived, and it’s only double that who managed the first alone; Ichabod’s patrol is very skilled, yes, but they’d have no chance at all, and they knew it. They share our traditions, and like us, they measure risk against what is gained, but they aren’t foolish; like us, they know what’s not possible.” He wets his lips and feels them almost immediately go numb. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt, and wouldn’t continue to hurt, every time any of them saw those bodies on the ground that close—only the ward line—and they couldn’t get them.”
“And Croats making a snack of ‘em when they got bored,” Dean says quietly, green eyes unreadable.
Castiel nods. “It wasn’t possible for them to retrieve the bodies, it was not risk but certainty that stopped them; that is not true for me. I could distract the Hellhounds, and I can kill them; all those I trained know how to fight them, how to avoid it, and most important of all, how to judge which of those two things to do. I didn’t order anyone to assist me—I made it clear it was not a mission and no one was required to come—but I’m their commander, and my example might have influenced them against their own inclinations—”
“Dude,” Dean interrupts, sounding strained. “I just came off a thousand mile run with five of your goddamn students, and I wouldn’t have believed that shit before Alicia played tag with Croats while Amanda went sniper on a demon like it was her goddamn birthday.”
He must admit, they did seem rather enthusiastic. Putting that firmly aside, he returns to the point. “I don’t regret it, and I would do nothing different,” Dean’s left eye twitches alarmingly, “but you’re my commander, and you decide policy. If you feel the risk is greater than—is too great, then I’ll… obey your orders.”
Dean starts to answer before he abruptly closes his mouth, sitting back against the pillows to regard Castiel as if he just said something very profound. “You’ll obey. If I say, no more going out to retrieve bodies, whatever, you’re okay with that.”
“I didn’t say that,” he answers, feeling the chill cut through the flannel as if it’s not there at all. “I said I’d obey; I didn’t say I’d be okay with it.”
“Right, that’s actually a valid point,” Dean agrees, still watching him. “Tell me why I should let you.”
He didn’t expect that. “What?”
“Tell me why—as your commander—I should let you, and by extension Chitaqua, go out and retrieve bodies for Ichabod. Or anyone: once you start that kind of thing, it gets around.”
Rapidly, Castiel reviews the entire preceding conversation; this isn’t a dream (he thinks) but his two experiences suggest that can be deceptive. “I just told you why—”
“You told me,” Dean says evenly, “why Ichabod does it for theirs. You told me why we do it for ours. You’ve given me no reason whatsoever why you—and Chitaqua—should risk their lives for Ichabod’s dead. Or anyone else’s, for that matter, let’s go there: why? We’re not talking saving lives, Cas; we’re talking mortuary services here.”
Frantically, Castiel reviews his early arguments and realizes that point is covered nowhere in them, and while there are several possibilities, there are holes in them all. “Our agreement with the Alliance—”
“Did not cover dead body retrieval,” Dean interrupts smoothly as Castiel reviews the entire agreement to the subclause; he didn’t expect it to be mentioned specifically, but he’d hoped for more ambiguity, somewhere. Anywhere. “Come on, Cas, you had a reason, don’t throw in the bullshit about tradition and sad people’s feelings; their loved ones are dead, they’re gonna be sad, the bodies may do something for them, may not, but we’re talking reasons, real ones here.”
“Those are real reasons,” he argues, vaguely aware this conversation is starting to resemble the earlier one but unable to stop it. “I don’t know what you want.”
“If you can’t tell me why—”
“I told you why!”
“You told me why we do it and why they do it, but you haven’t told me why we should do it for them,” Dean says in the same frighteningly even voice. “Pay or play, Cas, we don’t have all night; one roll, winner takes all, you place your bets and take your chances—”
“Because I could!”
Dean blinks at him.
“It was all of those things I said,” he says, not sure why he’s talking but he can’t seem to stop. “But it’s also this. When you see someone fall and they hurt themselves, you don’t think of the traditional history of falling and its application to this specific moment for relevance; you ask them—provided they’re conscious, verbal, and not concussed—if they need help up and follow their directions, and discard the question altogether if all three of those criteria aren’t met. If someone can’t lift something, you help them; if it’s beyond their strength or abilities for some reason, you do it for them. If someone stumbles, you catch them; if they’re thirsty and you have water, share it; if they’re hungry and you have food, offer it; if they’re tired, give them somewhere to rest; if they’re threatened by a vampire or a more aggressive than average gnome or insert creature here, protect them; if they hurt, provide comfort in whatever method they require; if they are there, and so are you, if you can, you should. My question is, all things being equal and in the absence of any compelling reason to do otherwise, why on earth would anyone not?”
Dean’s eyebrows—which have steadily been climbing—reach maximum ascension and visibly struggle to go higher. He has no idea whatsoever how to interpret that.
“If you wished me to do otherwise,” he adds determinedly, “you should not have modeled its opposite so thoroughly.”
He wonders uncertainly if Dean’s mouth just twitched. “Dude, you didn’t get that from me. That’s all you, buddy.”
Licking numb lips (and regretting it, why does he keep doing that in this weather?), he shakes his head, ignoring Dean’s frown. “The Host is not taught of human suffering; they accept it as a given, and like many things, it has always been unquestioned. Joy is deceptive and fleeting, pain is constant, all that is lived and experienced on earth is but a short, brutal prologue to eternal rest.”
Dean makes a face. “Okay, that’s—not entirely wrong.”
“It’s a greeting from a substandard Hallmark card—albeit a highly experimental line that you’d only send to people in the hope they’d hang themselves in response—with less emotional complexity than ‘Get Well Soon’,” he retorts. “Gaze on a single grain of sand and then presume you now know the nature of the cosmos: your ignorance would be appalling but still less than that of the Host, who never bothered to so much as look.”
“And you started looking,” Dean says softly.
“You asked,” he whispers, “why I continued to stare at a single grain of sand when there were mountains to be seen. All I had to do was look up.” He looks away. “Human misery may be ubiquitous to the human experience but it’s not synonymous with it—I feel I could have phrased that better, but I truly can’t bring myself to care—and we can reduce it, and in its absence joy will grow. And if we can, we should.”
“You convinced me.” Dean’s voice wobbles oddly. “We’ll—uh, we’ll do that. Keep doing it.”
Castiel looks up, biting back the smile at the hot flush across Dean’s cheeks. “I rather thought you’d understand.”
Dean ducks his head with a low chuckle, dragging Castiel willingly into his arms and pulling the blankets over them again. “Not like you didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done.”
“I hoped I wouldn’t need to point that out,” he tells Dean contentedly, tucking his freezing nose against Dean’s less-freezing neck. “I don’t particularly like fighting with you.”
“I should have done it,” Dean says more softly, and from the resigned sound of his voice, he’s been waiting to say that for some time. “That’s on me, Cas. Ran out of there, forgot all about them.”
“The search,” he starts, then realizes this might take a while if he takes that tack. “You did what you were supposed to do. There are, after all, supposed to be two weights.”
Dean’s arms tighten. “Uh. What?”
“I see what you mean now,” he continues; they really can’t stay out here much longer, Dean is going to become chilled and he needs his sleep. “I thought you were being facetious, but you were right.” Reluctantly, he lifts his head and looks into Dean’s eyes (and controls the potential chatter of his teeth). “You were unequivocally right on all points without a single exception; it’s not something you can do alone and most definitely shouldn’t, there are two weights, and I am very glad I accepted your offer to bear one of them.”
This close, Dean has without a doubt the most perfect eyes in the world. (He, too, should probably be asleep.)
“You,” Dean’s voice wavers. “You told me you couldn’t do it, remember?”
He did say ‘all points,’ but he can be generous. “As it turns out, I can. You were right about that as well.”
“Did you sprain something?” Dean asks, mouth curving in a slow smile. “Saying all that?”
“The truth always hurts,” he concedes reluctantly. “That’s why no one likes it. Can we go inside now? You’re shivering, and it could be my own exhaustion speaking, but you may also be turning blue.”
Dean’s hands come to rest on his cheeks, staring at him like he’s not sure what he is. “So your commander had to leave before he could get to the part where you thought it’d be a good idea to face down a Hellhound alone so you could explain…” He chuckles softly, looking at him—no one’s ever looked at him like Dean does. “He’ll talk to you about that tomorrow, okay? In detail.”
Castiel gracefully concedes tomorrow—today?—later would be much better, yes. “And my partner wishes to say something now?”
“Your boyfriend…” Still grinning, Dean tugs him into a kiss, and Castiel forgets he’s ever—in his entire existence—known the meaning of cold.
Despite being (possibly) blue, Dean insists on handling remaking the bed while Castiel occupies himself with watching him do it. This isn’t in any way a problem; Dean breathing in his general vicinity is the height of entertainment, and in motion is—somehow higher.
Snuggling under the replaced blankets, he yawns as Dean pulls the curtain into position, leaving the exact same opening to reveal Ichabod outside, before glancing back at Castiel.
“Yes,” he agrees, then reluctantly adds after a careful internal check and considering Dean’s vulnerability to the cold, “but it’s probably not necessary right now.”
“You like it, so it’s necessary,” Dean says, going to their bags and changing in record time; Castiel’s only regret is that he can’t see to Dean’s dressing and undressing himself, a regret he carries every single day. When he comes to bed, Castiel doesn’t bother to wait before curling up against him and doesn’t even wince despite the fact nothing—even vacuum space—lacks as much heat as Dean’s feet. In the (will soon be) warm darkness, he hears Dean say, “You usually go roof-sitting or camp-walking when you feel like that, head it off, I guess. What happened this time?”
“How did you—”
“You told me.” He did, yes, but he didn’t expect Dean to extrapolate that so well (what a stupid thought: Dean can do anything). “Was it me? What happened earlier? I set it off?”
He would lie—happily, with a clear conscience and without regret—but fortunately, he doesn’t need to. “No.” Reaching down, he thrusts a hand into the pocket of his sweatpants and finds it at the bottom in an unexpected crease. Removing the pill, he places it in Dean’s surprised hand. “Alprazolam, point five milligrams,” he answers sourly. “During those times one’s drug use isn’t as it should always be, recreational. Vera prescribed it.”
Dean looks up from his squint at his palm. “When she lived with you, something happened?”
“Yes. She recognized the signs and told me what it was. I had assumed it was some sort of obscure damage from Falling that would eventually kill me, but as it turned out, it was perfectly mundane overstimulation of the central nervous system responding to emotional stressors resulting in an adrenal dump leading to an artificial flight-or-fight reaction; when some set of arbitrary conditions are met, all that is needed is a trigger or something, she used many more words, of course. In Latin.”
After checking with him, Dean reaches over to set it by the lamp on the wooden crate. “Used to be worse?”
“Much,” he says. “And more frequent. The—disagreement—didn’t help, no, but that alone wouldn’t be enough.” He remembers Sean’s ridiculous behavior outside Nate’s room and what Alicia said about Chitaqua being surprisingly calm for so many volatile (to say the least) soldiers in one place. It might even explain Kat’s volatility, for that matter. “Earlier, Vera told me if it made me feel better, there was a reason she got those scripts from Ichabod, which I can infer means it wasn’t just me that needed them. Remind me in the morning to place candles in all areas that we congregate in.”
“The geas.” Dean blows out a breath that’s almost a snarl before abruptly sitting up. “The party downstairs—”
“Like most compulsives, a geas takes advantage of human neurochemistry,” Castiel interrupts. “Unless the person or persons who created this showed more foresight in this one area than in anything else they’ve done, it wasn’t ever meant to deal with a depressive, which alcohol definitely is, especially with what we have here.”
“So if we got the whole town drunk…”
“I do see the irony,” Cas agrees, but to his displeasure, Dean slides out of bed with a hiss, hunting for his boots.
“Just gonna send everyone to bed,” Dean tells him, pulling on another flannel over his thermal as he starts for the door. “Give me five minutes, okay?”
It’s longer than five minutes, but eventually, Dean returns in desperate need of being warmed (though Castiel makes a note to have Vera examine Dean’s feet at his next physical for blood flow; nothing can be that cold).
“Vera, Matt, and Jeremy helped,” Dean tells him when his teeth stop chattering, settling in with a contented sigh. “She’d just come back from the infirmary; she and Dolores examined Carol’s leg after she took her back earlier.”
“How is she?”
“No change,” Dean answers quietly, and Castiel knows he’s thinking about Carol’s bandaged leg. “Which she said doesn’t mean much but Carol has more time.”
Castiel nods; Vera might doubt her skill, but that’s not the only reason she thinks the surgery on Carol’s leg didn’t work. Even had Darryl (sober and clean) performed the surgery in a fully-equipped surgical unit, it might not have been enough with the kind of damage that a Hellhound does to a human body. That she hadn’t died during that attack is a testament to Carol’s skill, but when not otherwise occupied or when they have no need for a quick kill, a Hellhound’s attack is meant to mutilate, to maim, to do immense damage, as much as possible while the prey is still living, before they finally kill.
“She also said,” Dean adds in a different voice, “that Rem—one of the guys from Volunteer Services killed himself a couple of hours ago.”
“I thought everyone was being watched?”
“They were, but Vera said he seemed okay,” Dean says softly. “There was an emergency in the infirmary, they thought he was asleep, ran down to help, and he…” There’s a pause. “He was waiting for that, I guess. He was on the second floor. He tied his bedsheets together, made a noose, and jumped out the window. Didn’t hold long, but enough to break his neck.”
He nods against Dean’s shoulder, not sure how to offer comfort or if Dean even realizes he needs it. “Teresa and Wendy are still working on retrieving the original instructions, but how much that may matter to guessing the future effects depends on how much it alters as it passes, now in infinite variation.”
“Stupid question,” Dean says, and something in his voice makes Castiel tense. “We have any idea yet how to get rid of this for good? I get knowing more about this will help, but that part, I haven’t quite worked out yet.”
“There are an infinite number of ways to remove a compulsive, even a mass one,” he answers slowly. “However, we must have the original to narrow it down. This isn’t what is possible, but what is practical. The one most likely to work right now is the most impractical; Teresa gaining enough power from the earth to lift them from discrete groups and isolating those who still have it from those who don’t. But—”
“A lot of power, a lot of time, a lot of people, and how the hell do we divide the town between ‘isolated’ and ‘not’ longer than a day, maybe two?” Dean says for him. “And Alison…?”
“Alison is very powerful in potential and unpracticed in what power she has in fact,” he explains; it’s far easier to discuss what Alison can do than explain what she can’t and why. “Alison hasn’t—as far as Teresa and Wendy can ascertain—been affected by the geas despite the fact she is probably the most exposed person in Ichabod.”
“All those tours of Third through Seventh,” Dean agrees with a sigh. “And thank God for that, or I don’t even want to know what would happen with her in a catalyst event.”
“Try not to even try to imagine it,” he answers, feeling Dean’s hand start to stroke his back. “Psychics do have some inbuilt defenses against coercives, but Teresa is almost certain it’s her shielding, which she has improved at immensely since this started.”
Dean tilts his head down to look at him. “Good job, Professor Cas.”
“I would normally be more modest, but yes,” he agrees and is rewarded with Dean’s smile. “Or rather, our sessions together; she’s an excellent student and I was very thorough as she advanced. If she’d had direct contact with the maps, it would be useless, but now it’s going between people, and that does have a very small psychic component, and that much protects her. Would that I could work out how to teach people who aren’t psychic to do that; it would fix this very quickly.”
“Can they?” Dean asks doubtfully. “I mean, not being psychic and all? Wouldn’t that be like trying to teach someone red-green colorblind to see red or something?”
“A stop sign is always red,” he explains after thinking about it for a moment. “That’s a standard used on roads to denote ‘stop.’ Even if you couldn’t visually discern the color yourself, because it’s standard you have learned its color is called ‘red’.”
Dean looks even more dubious.
“It’s not helpful now, no,” he admits. “But working so closely with Alison has familiarized me with human perception and given me context on how to translate my own knowledge to fit her abilities. It’s not a question of ‘possible,’ but more…’yes, but not yet’.”
“You’re adding this to the List, aren’t you?” Dean asks with a warmth that makes Castiel curl closer.
He nods. “I am, once we deal with… everything else.”
“Fair enough.”
Dean nods, and Castiel almost thinks they dodged the evitable bullet that is Dean’s tendency to dwell when the stroking comes to a stop.
“Everything else, yeah. How long until…” He hears Dean inhale sharply before continuing. “How far along is the sacrifice now anyway? We’re what, two days from the barrier going the way of the dodo, so…”
He’d lie—happily, in relief, to both of them—if he knew what answer either of them wanted to hear. That leaves only honesty; twice two thousand lives must end to do this, and it’s simply math. Crowley said it would be fast, but these are demons; they’ll assure there’s sufficient time for pain.
“Unless something went very wrong, with the potential number of people, the circle should have been closed two days ago at the latest and the sacrifice begun. No matter how well controlled or powerful their master, these are demons; their master will use as few as possible to do this, both to avoid the possibility of them making a temporary alliance against him to gain the power and overpower him, and to make killing them all very easy when they’re done.”
Dean doesn’t say they don’t even know if the circle works; he doesn’t say they should hope it does or that it doesn’t; he doesn’t mention Erica or the Misborn or the geas again; he doesn’t list all the ways that they could die, because there is one way that they most certainly will; if the circle doesn’t work, if the barrier doesn’t come up, if it comes up too late, they won’t survive, and no one else will, either. All the ways they could die, but that one—the one that could render all the others moot or at least less dangerous—is the only one they cannot control and would have stopped if they could.
And for twenty-seven people yesterday, none of that matters at all. He doesn’t think it should—even for a moment—considered an advantage to be dead simply on the strength of not having to worry anymore when and how you’ll die.
“I attacked a Hellhound with nothing but my knife without backup,” he says abruptly. “I could very well have been maimed by a second one if Sarah hadn’t shown initiative beyond which I assure you anyone who has ever met her could possibly have expected. Did anyone tell you—”
“What,” Dean says incredulously, “are you doing?”
“—that she beat it with her rifle until it ran away?” he finishes desperately. “I was very reckless and should be spoken to firmly on the subject, truly I deserve it. Now is an excellent time.”
Castiel lands (painlessly) on the bed as Dean sits up, staring down at him as if he’s gone insane (that was years ago, they should all move on now). “Christo.”
“You, on the other hand, killed six to eight Croats while bravely protecting the wall and the gate, ran almost three miles chased by more of them while shooting them when possible, and in what is possibly the most dramatic moment of any mission I’ve ever seen, entered the postern door at the very last moment,” he says, ignoring Dean breathing an exorcism with a truly terrible accent; they’ll work on that. “If we go back a day earlier, you—”
“Are we really going to run through the Ichabod Adventures right now?” Dean demands.
“Only the ones we survived,” he answers reasonably. “That would be all of them. I could be wrong, but I think we’re on a streak.”
Dean glares at him for another moment before dropping back on the bed with the most put-upon sigh ever uttered by any human being. Rolling over, he shoves an arm under Castiel’s shoulders and jerks him closer. “Is this your version of thinking positive?”
“How am I doing?” he asks, sliding an arm around Dean’s waist, eyes already falling closed. “Feedback would be appreciated, of course.”
“Let me think about it,” Dean murmurs against his hair. “Get back to you in the morning.”
Dean wakes at dawn with the impression his right hand and forearm are being crushed beneath the Chrysler Building: holy shit.
“Dean?” Cas says sleepily, rubbing his stubbled cheek against Dean’s shoulder like a really sexy cat (wait, what?), which any other time Dean would be able to fully appreciate and not simply note as happening. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t even try to unfist his hand; that way lies possible whimpering. “Bathroom,” he says in a decent imitation of his normal voice. Stroking down Cas’s back with his left, he drops a kiss against his hair without thinking about it and wonders when he started doing that. “Be right back, okay?”
With a sigh like someone just asked to run a marathon, Cas shifts onto the pillow while glaring at him from behind tangled brown hair and giving the impression Dean’s doing this just for spite or something. Sitting up, Dean also notes being in pain does in no way affect his reaction to a sleepy, rumpled Cas in a sea of bedding; it’s like domestic porn or something. A little desperate, he reviews centerfolds from every magazine that comes in a plastic shame wrap and by the time he hits the bathroom is resigned to the fact they may still be hot, but not as hot as that.
Dean thinks, just to check: my sleepy boyfriend in a perfectly normal bed is sexier than porn. For fuck’s sake, those are cotton sheets you buy two for the price of one at Walmart.
(Walmart: best place to shop at midnight when you got some corpses and nothing to wrap ‘em in. He’s comparison-shopped this shit in twenty-two states; he knows.)
Dean takes care of urgent bathroom business left-handed (that he’s used to) before going to one of the unsettlingly wide marble sinks that never ceases to make him wonder uneasily what the fuck lawyer guy was thinking and turning on the hot water. Someone (Dane, probably) did something Dean assumes was not a blood sacrifice (though in this case, not entirely opposed) that turned their kind-of sometimes not-cold water into actual hot water. Which means a building no one uses in Ichabod that they started occupying four days ago is doing better on water than their camp.
(Potable water is happening, one way or another.)
As soon as it’s just below scalding, Dean turns on enough cold water to not end up with almost-burns before shoving his hand beneath the excellent water pressure coming from the faucet, stiffening at the bright shock of pain from muscles not into the ‘relaxing’ thing. It’s almost impossible to imitate Cas’s massage magic period, much less with one hand, but he does try, rubbing his thumb into the center of the palm and trying to replicate by memory what he usually experiences in a state of not-entirely-exaggerating euphoria and only remembers as ‘oh God yes.’
Sure, he could ask Cas to help, like someone sensible and rational, but call him crazy, he’s kind of not okay with demanding his boyfriend take care of his poor fucking muscle cramps after so spectacularly fucking up taking care of his actual bleeding Hellhound wounds.
Eventually, he feels the stiff muscles start to respond and makes a note to get the wrist brace that was helpfully packed up with Cas’s drugs and various medical paraphernalia by Mel and brought to Ichabod.
With a sigh, he looks in the mirror and freezes at the utterly familiar face that is reflected back at him; it’s like looking at a perfect copy of himself. A glint of something gets his attention, and in the mirror, beneath the spray of steamy water, he sees his fingers tightly curled around a knife.
Dean doesn’t remember moving, but the sharp pain in his head and the abrupt distance between him and the sink suggest he’s flat against the opposite wall, hand throbbing anew. Automatically, he steadies his breathing, using every trick he learned on a thousand hunts to remain calm; only then does he look down and see his fisted hand is wrapped around nothing at all. Before he can think about it too hard, he lifts it up and the mirror shows the same goddamn thing: nothing there.
Dean thinks: long day, not enough sleep, Andy, Carol, Erica, Alicia (don’t think about that), Hellhounds, fight with Cas, killed twenty-seven people, every-fucking-thing else. Not a surprise, come to think: the surprise is he isn’t hallucinating himself up a real machine gun and taking out everyone on spec.
It still takes him a long couple of minutes to move and even longer to finally turn off the water. Looking into the mirror, the only face he sees now is his own.
Warnings: suicide, method cutting wrists. It's not a play by play, but it is mentioned semi-explicitly; implied spousal abuse.