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— Day 157, continued —
Joe and Cas are barely gone five minutes for their tour of Micah’s new home (hopefully, that will put Cas in a better mood) when there’s a knock at the door. “Come in.”
The door opens enough for Sarah to look inside. “Dean? Do you have a few minutes?”
“Hey,” he says, surprised. “Sure. Uh, Vera and Kamal are getting the team leaders together right now.”
“The meeting is in twenty minutes,” she says, opening the door fully and pausing on the threshold. “We’re waiting for Christina and James to arrive.”
“Then now’s fine.” As she steps inside, closing the door behind her, Dean reflects ‘you send Sarah when you want to lie’ makes sense when you realize she almost never changes expression; that kind of makes it hard to work out what this is about. “Uh, sit down,” he says belatedly, dropping into the middle of the couch, and she selects the chair directly across from him. “What’s going on?” Then, remembering Kat exists, “Any problems? More, I mean?”
“No new incidents,” she answers immediately, giving him no time to feel relieved before saying, “I take responsibility for the spread of the information regarding Alicia’s duties in Ichabod after the attack three weeks ago. I understand it might not be convenient for you to relieve me of duty now, but when we return to Chitaqua—”
“Wait.” He takes a minute to get with the program. “Start over. What?” Then (this being Sarah), “Don’t repeat what you just said: bullshit. I gotta know, though, how this is your fault.”
“She’s on my team and is my responsibility. I heard Kat and Carol talking with Kyle that night, as well as parts of their conversation over the course of the day,” she answers coolly, face smooth.
“You heard them talking shit about Alicia?”
“About a large number of people, though not specifically that,” she replies, and Dean files that away as ‘probably will have to find out what else’ though fuck if he want to. “Kat was acting—she seemed calmer,” she says suddenly, lowering her eyes, and Dean wonders if it’s personality or something else that keeps her so contained, that just seeing that tells him how much stress she’s under. “She’s always been an extrovert, and I assumed company was helping her. Under the circumstances, I didn’t think to intercede or report it.”
“Dude, we start trying to regulate people talking shit about each other—I don’t even know how we’d do that. I sure as hell don’t want to.” While it might have pissed off him to overhear, he wouldn’t have done anything, either. Or seen this coming, because normal people don’t weaponize that shit for mass destruction. “She’s grieving, she’s pissed, she got a sympathetic audience, that’s gonna happen.”
“She’s angry, yes, but she’s also convinced herself that… I’m not sure how to explain it.” A faint line appears between her eyebrows that Dean interprets as a frown; he may just be witnessing what Sarah looks like when she’s really pissed. “She knows what happened, Dean, but she keeps—like when Cas told her that her request for a cabin for her and Andy was on hold due to lack of cabins. There are no others—you can count them—but she refused to believe it.”
The closest Dean’s come to literally throwing someone out of their cabin is when he came home to hear Cas dealing with that. “I remember.”
“In retrospect, I shouldn’t have recommended she be allowed Carol’s company—or Kyle’s,” she continues with the barest edge in her voice: very, very pissed. “They encouraged her in her grievances, and while I acquit Kyle of malice though not stupidity, in Carol’s case—I think it was deliberate.”
Huh. “She’s fucking with Kat’s head on purpose?”
“If you mean that she deliberately took advantage of Kat’s grief, yes,” Sarah answers. “However, she wouldn’t be able to if Kat didn’t welcome it. Kat—I thought I knew her.”
“Grief can fuck you up.” It’s the best he can do right now. “It makes people crazy.”
“Yes, so I understand,” she answers, looking at him intently. “It can make it difficult for someone to think clearly, leading to impulsive decisions they would not make under other circumstances.” He nods warily. “Kat didn’t have a hangover this morning, unlike Kyle and two others who were invited to join them for a few hours last night.”
“Okay.” He wonders how clearly he’s thinking right now. “Her tolerance better?”
“Yes,” she says. “Though Kyle’s is almost as good, and the other two not far off. When I cleaned the room this morning, none of the empty bottles were Kat’s drink of choice, but two thirds were Kyle’s.”
He straightens: how very not impulsive that is. “You don’t say.”
“Kat seemed better this morning when I checked on her before going on duty at dawn,” Sarah says. “More like herself. When Joseph recalled me and told me what had happened this morning, I spoke to Kat and told her what happened in the mess. She expressed the appropriate amount of remorse for her actions, regretted the overindulgence last night that led to poor judgment, was shocked by Carol spreading it through the infirmary, and told me that she would like to apologize, both to you, Alicia, Dolores, and Alison, for the harm she inadvertently caused.”
You send Sarah when you want to lie; he’s gonna bet you also send her when someone’s lying to you. “She went right down the checklist.”
“I was impressed by her thorough sense of responsibility,” Sarah agrees. “Then I asked how she knew what Carol said in the infirmary, since I hadn’t mentioned it.” The line appears again. “She then became overcome with grief. I ordered her confined to quarters and recalled my team to watch her.”
Dean bites back a suggestion of where they can put Kat (outside the fucking wall). That would (probably) be an overreaction. “Good call.”
“Regarding Kyle’s part in this… I think he can be acquitted of knowingly assisting Kat and Carol; he thought he was speaking to a friend, and I doubt Kat told him that at that moment he wasn’t.” Sarah hesitates for a moment before meeting his eyes. “I haven’t spoken to the other team leaders on the subject, but the nature of the confidence that Kyle disclosed concerns us all.”
He keeps his expression interested, but Christ. “How?”
“Alicia’s actions were performed in the line of duty; Kat and Kyle used that against her, but they shouldn’t have thought they could nor should they have been able to. The blame must also rest on those who upon hearing it not only spread it further, but presumed to sit in judgement on her for doing her duty.” Minutely, her jaw tightens. “That anyone from Chitaqua would do that was… unexpected. And unwelcome.”
Relieved, he nods; he thinks he may know what’s going on. “I don’t think they thought any farther than ‘kids’,” he offers, wondering how many of them may have lost their own kids. Mike can’t be the only one, and he doubts that the only family who died in Erica’s basement were adults. Cas said it himself: nothing more horrifying than a Croat kid and knowing you have to kill them, and Carol’s (genuine) question got him thinking on that.
It’s probably pretty comforting to think there are things you’d never do (he knows all about that) or even that you couldn’t. If Alicia did it, though—someone they know, someone like them—either they’re wrong about that, or (comforting, remember) something’s wrong with her, maybe she likes it, could be anything. Because fuck knows, liking a job is the only way anyone would ever do it; if that’s not true, they may have to do shit they don’t like, they aren’t okay with, that may give them nightmares, but has to be done anyway, and can’t fucking have that.
“There’s a reason the executioner always wears a hood.” He shakes his head when Sarah tilts her head curiously. “Drew and Phil are with Kat?”
“Yes.”
“Do I need to ask how she took that?”
“Predictably,” Sarah answers, which Dean takes to mean ‘lots of crying and saying the shittiest things she can think of’ (she’s a goddamn genius at that). “Phil and Drew share my feelings on this. We’ll assure she doesn’t take any further negative action.”
“Shit job,” he says honestly. “I’ll talk to Cas about who can help you out; no one should have to deal with that full time.” Yesterday, he didn’t have anyone confined anywhere; today, he’s gonna have three people and one in an actual cell under guard. “Not your fault, Sarah. Resignation refused, and we’ll talk more when we get back to Chitaqua.”
She nods as she gets to her feet. “Thank you.”
“It’s secure,” Cas says after he and Joe return, seemingly soothed by imagining Micah in there. “And sufficiently bleak as well. I sent a team to acquire a table and several chairs as well as to install a lock on the door. I’m trying to remember if Ichabod has any recording devices we could use. The laptops are equipped with webcams, but that isn’t terribly subtle.”
“Not that I don’t approve,” Dean starts, because he may not know the reason, but if Cas wants to do it, he approves (barring one on one’s with Hellhounds, of course), “but why?”
“For one, because we don’t have a giant unsubtle window to watch him,” Joe retorts from his lounge in a frayed armchair. “That means we’re restricted to eyes and ears in the room, and Dean, my hand hurts. Let’s record and make it easy on ourselves.”
“For another, the person who knows him best and is most likely to get him to talk is also the one that shouldn’t be in that room,” Cas adds, seating himself in the corner of the couch by Dean and by dint of sheer Cas-ness doesn’t immediately start to sink (though tucking a leg underneath him probably helps, yeah). “Recordings are an excellent substitute.
“I was thinking that,” Joe admits. “Wonder if we have the same reasons.”
“If Alicia could get anything out of him…” Dean starts, not liking himself for even thinking it, not if he’s right, and honestly, he hopes he’s not.
“Micah wants her there,” Cas says.
Joe nods. “That’d be it.”
Dean considers. “He only asked for her once.”
“He asked for his wife,” Joe clarifies. Dean looks his ‘I just said that’ and Joe sighs noisily. “Remember what I said about marriage assuming certain things? Like with me and Monica?” He nods. “Dean, I didn’t talk out with Monica exactly what she wanted, when, and how just for the times when she couldn’t speak for herself; a third of the time, they’d look to me to answer questions first even if she was right there. I had to be ready to support whatever she said like I knew what I was talking about, because they thought I knew more than her.”
“So he thought that’s all he needed to say.”
“Yeah,” Joe says. “Micah’s script was a little out of date, but with you—just two guys, about the same age—he didn’t think he had to work for it. He’s assuming the question you’re asking yourself is ‘is there any good reason not to reunite this married couple,’ especially now that he’s coming to Headquarters, though how he missed your transparent lack of fucks is a mystery but not much of one. Trust me, as Monica’s ex-husband who watched this shit go down way too many times, that was both noticeable and refreshing. So yes, he expects to see her, and Dean, may be just me here, but I think it’s a little weird that one, he wants to see the woman who put a knife in his thigh to get rid of him—
“I forgot to ask—does he have a limp?” Cas interrupts curiously.
“We’ll know when Amanda brings him back,” Dean says. “Watch him perp walk through reception.”
“—and two—related to one—why the fuck he didn’t even bother complaining about it. Sure, none of us would have taken it seriously because fuck him, but he’s a lawyer, so why not accuse one of your lieutenants of attempted murder?” Something flickers across his face, there and gone, but meeting his eyes, Dean nods slightly; they’re both thinking about that. “I seriously doubt it’s for reminiscing on the good times or reconciliation.”
“He wants her to do something.” Dean tries to think of circumstances under which Alicia would do something other than maybe stab him again and get it right this time. “Or not do something, maybe.”
“Or just create more confusion,” Joe agrees. “Basically, I can’t think of a single good reason he wants to see her, and it might tell us something when he realizes we’re not gonna let him.”
“This is gonna be fun,” Dean says glumly. “So interrogators—”
“I should go do—something,” Joe says immediately, making a face at Dean. “Anything you need? Technically, I’m officer on duty.”
“Haruhi and Rosario should be assigned to the infirmary,” Cas answers. “If Carol has any more revelations about anyone from Chitaqua that she feels the need to share, I’d like to know about it.”
“Kind of wonder why she didn’t tell more,” Joe admits as he stands up. “Not like she’d have any reason to confine herself to the truth, so lots of material.”
“Yeah,” Dean agrees, rolling his eyes at Joe’s sloppy salute on his way out of the door. “So I gotta pick interrogators.”
“I would volunteer,” Cas says slowly, like he’s trying to find even a shitty euphemism and there’s just not one, “but my skillsets are…”
“I know,” Dean assures him, pissed all over again for new and exciting reasons; Cas would actually be really good at questioning people. Half the job is appearance and attitude, and that blank stare alone is a whole other skill. The ex-angel thing might really work for this, too; terrifying suspects isn’t a drawback, and honestly, Cas’s people skills are better than some of the police and FBI agents Dean’s met who did it professionally. But no: Dean goddamn Winchester got an angel and taught him all the skillsets to be the best creepy Henchman #1 ever to exist. “I’m still working on the fact I’m ordering someone interrogated,” he retorts. “And if you say anything about demons—”
“I wasn’t going to,” Cas says mildly. “But if it would help, I will, so we can argue about it, though I will need you to tell me which side I should take.”
He turns sideways to try a glare, which makes Cas bite his lip on a smile. “Okay, what?”
“I was just thinking,” he answers. “I’ve never had make-up sex. If we are to die tomorrow, a fight now—assuming we were quick about it—would assure I could cross that off my bucket list in the next three hours. Which side should I take?”
Dean contemplates how you pick up a skillset that includes conversationally relevant sex jokes. “Everything I do,” he hears himself say, “I’m saying that it’s okay to do this or it’s not. Dude, this didn’t go well when it was just Sam doing the mini-me before he grew up and figured out I was…” He searches for the right word. “Me.”
Cas stares at him for just long enough for Dean to understand he thinks he’s an idiot. “I’m going to guess this is you worrying that you’re doing or going to do something terrible that will set a precedent that will eventually lead to horrors untold.”
“You’d think so,” he answers; what are the things he couldn’t do? That’s becoming a very short list, and he has a feeling it’s only going to get shorter from here on out. “Rosario.”
“What?”
“You were telling me about Rosario and Haruhi and—” He shrugs. “Look, I don’t know.”
“Why I picked Rosario.” Cas turns to settle in the corner, drawing up his other leg, and impulsively, Dean tugs it across his lap and earns himself a surprised smile. Curving a hand below Cas’s knee, he leans his head against his other hand and waits. “The first class at Chitaqua that I instructed, I taught with Dean’s assistance,” he says. “The second one was the first I taught alone. I told you that was the first I enjoyed teaching, but it would be fair to say it was also the first that I wasn’t a terrible instructor.”
“Is this where you blame yourself for teaching Assassination 101 or—”
“This is far more mundane, I assure you,” Cas replies. “You said you noticed Haruhi. She’s extraordinary; natural talent in a variety of skills allied with experience, drive, and a highly competent instructor. Time and experience will only make her better. She can’t not be.”
Dean nods. “Not everyone can be Haruhi, I get that.”
“I did the same thing,” he says. “When I trained the first class at Chitaqua, I noticed the best—Erica, Stanley, Terry, Cynthia, Luke—”
“Christ,” Dean interjects, because of course Cas’s best students in that first class were his future killers. Like, could it happen any other way?
“—Ray, Melanie, Sarah, and Risa,” he continues. “And the worst, of course, since my duty was to see they weren’t killed seconds after stepping off the training field. I evaluated their strengths and weaknesses for a week, then tailored their education to that. Those who were very good, I focused on their strengths and assured competence in all else; for those—not—I emphasized mitigating their weaknesses. Those between had neither the benefit of my very questionably positive or negative attention—probably a relief, in retrospect. I suspect they worked very hard and achieved competence on the hope of avoiding just that.”
Dean lets Cas see that he’s mentally reviewing the definition of ‘competent’ as it applies to Chitaqua, which is pretty much its own standard. “Yeah, I got nothing. It worked, in case you’re curious.”
“Of course it worked; the curriculum was designed to work,” he answers impatiently, like Dean is just doing this to annoy him. “It worked very well, especially in teaching three quarters of the class that they would never be anything more than competent in anything they ever did so why try. Or they were the sum of their weakest skill, I’m not sure.
“The second class was different.” He smiles faintly. “Vera hated something called PE class and it was a literal effort to make her do laps. I had to have Amanda chase her, and her reaction to firearms was bafflement, which is why I checked that they were empty before letting her touch them.” He shakes his head at the weirdness of humanity (Dean’s with him there). “Then there was Amanda. She was so good, Dean, and she had no idea because she compared herself against Debra, who was—herself. It probably didn’t help she coveted Debra’s lover, no.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “Jesus, if you could tell back then…”
“It was very unsettling,” he answers, frowning. “Pornography led to me to believe this would eventually result in a rage-fueled erotic public threesome in mud—I even checked regularly for rain—”
“How much was Bobby drinking when you discovered the Penthouse Channel?” Dean demands; ‘a lot,’ on a guess, would be an understatement.
“I transmuted it into single malt-flavored water when needed,” he answers dismissively. “This was nothing like that. Imagine two vaguely human-shaped wolverines who pretended to be friends until either they were holding weapons or my back was turned. And I had to be clean and sober for all of it, every day,” he adds incredulously, like he can’t figure out he managed.
“And Vera…”
“Pretended—badly—that it wasn’t happening; if only all of us could have been so fortunate,” he says resentfully. “Though you could predict whether Debra had slept on the couch or not the night before by who started the first fight the next morning, I discovered. My first class was focused, determined—”
“Really goddamn crazy.” You don’t get that kind of per capita assassin number from run of the mill crazy; this is special edition shit.
“That goes without saying,” he agrees. “Relentless in acquiring the needed skills, and probably utterly terrified of me while harboring growing resentment that I treated them like interchangeable human-shaped parts, and not—well, Joseph, for example. He wasn’t lying about being in the Israeli army, but I still suspect that was some sort of implanted memory by means and for reasons unknown; Kamal and Jody would be fine before some exercise reminded them of competitive rollerblading and argued the point—hint, far too often, if only demons came with attached wheels—James and Christina were very earnest and obeyed every order to the letter, which you would think would be a relief but wasn’t because left to their own devices on what to do without me to tell them, they’d do nothing at all. And that’s before Zack seduced Nate—after Sean seduced him, in case this requires context—and the only reason I didn’t need to watch for Sean and Nate to kill each other is that no matter how hard Sean tried to bait him, Nate genuinely didn’t care. Amanda and Debra would sometimes pause their rampant very non-erotically charged hostility to shout them into submission as well, of course.”
Dean realizes he’s grinning. “And the rest?”
“Lee was focused and determined, but silently so; it was two weeks into training before I ever heard his voice—excellent baritone, perfect pitch, in case you’re curious; Ana was ridiculously competent, being a Marine, but didn’t seem to care what it was she was doing or even why; Mira was quiet from intimidation and a dislike of conflict and possessed the inexplicable ability to actually shrink in size if you made the mistake of trying to look at her directly; Penn whistled off-key always, but constantly when she was nervous, which was every moment on the training field; and Matt and Lena were obedient without being at all earnest and often not nearly as subtle in the use of sarcasm as they thought they were and made no attempt whatsoever to do it quietly. Then there was Mark, who was almost as good as Amanda and seemed to be content to do everything she could but not quite as well.”
“And Debra?”
“Resented being in training with those of less skill, resented me for making her—Dean was excluded from blame, of course—resented Amanda for reasons already covered, and found everyone’s lack of professionalism unacceptable and took valuable time from resenting everything else to tell us all about it. She also disliked me personally, and disliked me even more because I didn’t particularly care.”
“Kamal told me first day you told them they were boring,” Dean tells him, grin widening at Cas’s low laugh. “What did Vera say to you anyway?”
“The word ‘fuck’ featured prominently in every possible iteration and anywhere she could make it fit,” he admits. “And I was bored, up until that moment. The best—Amanda, Mark, Debra—and the worst—Joe, Vera—were identified, the rest would be fine… but Mira’s unaccountable need to apologize when she made a mistake was like vocal sandpaper, by the tenth day, I wanted to stab Lee just to see if he had a voice at all or this was a case of mutism at which time I’d apologize, while Matt and Lena stood in actual daily danger of being forcibly muted and it’s not as if I didn’t have a variety of gags.”
Dean has to takes a moment (not for the gag thing, he hasn’t seen the collection yet, but of course Cas has one, probably in the utility-library-closet) to visualize non-erotically-charged muddy combat on one side of the field, Sean failing to beat up an indifferent Nate on the other, Jody and Kamal arguing about Nike versus Reebok (versus Adidas, if he remembers right), two wisecrackers commenting on everything while Vera and Zack tried to pretend they weren’t part of two separate love triangles and the rest being—themselves. While Cas dealt with a cross-section of humanity at its most freakish that he was supposed to teach how to save the world or at least not get killed trying to do it.
“And then they saw one of their classmates executed for Croatoan after a mission, and spent a day watching their instructor and another classmate unsubtly being stalked to their potential death,” he finishes tonelessly, and Dean’s smile fades. “It had something of a sobering effect.”
He squeezes Cas’s knee reassuringly; there’s more than one reason Cas had to be stoned out of his mind to talk about it the first time. Micah’s version told him a lot, including why Cas couldn’t have done it any other way.
“Boring,” Cas says unexpectedly. “They listened closely, followed instruction, worked hard and consistently—it was maddening. Despite my policy against sex with current students, it was unbearably tempting to seduce Zack—Lee actually did, possibly just to see what the fuss was about, and I must admit I was curious as well—and see if that would help.”
“They were scared,” Dean offers; there’s a difference when what you’re scared of is behind the walls that protect you from what scares you outside them. “How long did it take them to get over it?”
“About a week,” he answers. “It was all almost-competence and focused attention and low-grade depression for all, like a desaturated training montage set to funeral music—Stairway to Heaven, perhaps, or Garth Brooks’ The Dance,” he muses. “Which according to a very reputable website was commissioned by funeral directors to increase business in conjunction with the CIA and spread via mind control.”
“They might have been onto something there.” There’s no good explanation for how that song—for almost a decade—seemed to be playing or about to play no matter what station the radio was on, including the times he’s pretty sure the radio was supposed to be off. Dean’s not completely divorced from the musical revolutions of the late eighties and early nineties—if nothing else, the number of people wearing flannel was hard to miss, and hot girls suddenly started going for the ‘haven’t showered in days’ thing (not that he’s complaining), and then the horrifying discovery that line dancing wasn’t a new and weird form of evil (at least, not supernatural, or so he was told)—but there’s that and then there’s how it (inevitably) came on the radio after a (shitty) hunt, at which time he (didn’t) cry (sob) over the wheel of the Impala because he imagined Mom dancing with Dad in the kitchen (pregnant with Sam, of course), fuck that goddamn song. “Or a geas,” he says in dawning realization. He’s gotta ask Teresa about that.
Cas nods thoughtfully; yeah, they’re definitely gonna look into it. “Vera and I were waiting for them, as usual, and when everyone arrived, they grimly warmed up in monotonously depressing formation, we briefly reviewed the relevant lessons from the day before, and…” He makes a face. “Penn started to whistle, Mira apologized for something, and they started acting like themselves and not—whatever they were doing.”
Like Cas said: even horror can become mundane, and you learn to live with it. Fear’s not any different; you can only be terrified for so long before something has to give. You learn to live with it; it’s hard, yeah, but it helps when you know everyone around you is doing the same damn thing.
“In any case, I knew them. Vera has extremely steady hands—no surprise there—and superlative eyesight and precision; Joseph’s height and physical strength was best suited to blunt instruments and more—and larger—weapons than most people could easily lift and carry; Kamal and Jody’s rollerblading proclivities had given them superlative reflexes—I was surprised.” Cas starts to smile again. “Then there was Alicia.”
Dean fights not to straighten. “Alicia—wait, that was during two months of extracurricular hunter playtime, right?”
“That’s exactly what it was in retrospect. As you’re aware, there’s not much to do in Chitaqua, and since everyone had to keep in training anyway, the evening sessions at least offered variety. Which is why—I think—that not just the second class attended them. Amanda learned how to teach people who already knew the curriculum but would like the refresher, and I taught other things that weren’t covered in class or not covered so thoroughly.”
“Let me guess—knife fighting.”
“It wasn’t popular—humans generally prefer guns, and they are a vast improvement over the slingshot—but Amanda wasn’t used to being… let’s say ‘not good’ at something. A gun person,” he adds thoughtfully, nodding. “I see what Alicia meant. In any case, Amanda didn’t have a natural aptitude for bladework, it felt awkward to her, so she didn’t like it. Before, I would have left it once she achieved competence—and it must be said, she was still better than the rest of the class—but she wouldn’t even attempt to improve. I told her she was acting like a child, she would argue with me—”
“Joan really was living the dream,” Dean mutters, remembering what Joe told him about her regular attendance at hunter playtime.
Cas tilts his head. “What?”
“Nothing.” Everyone else got drama and tragedy, but Joan got Your Life Is Insanely Hot Apocalyptic Porn; what the hell? “Keep going.”
Cas’s eyes narrow suspiciously before settling again. “So I started her on knife dances—those only fit for a child—so she’d be forced to learn the movements and advance, from sheer boredom if nothing else. About a week after we began, I noticed that Alicia was watching and realized she might have been since we started. For the next week, every night, she would excuse herself from whatever she was working on and very subtly observe us. I was impressed.”
“And then she asked to play?”
He shakes his head. “Amanda unconvincingly turned her ankle during the second of the intermediate dances due to frustration and insisted on taking a break, so I invited Alicia to join us. I wasn’t sure she would do so, but she did, and I gave her the knife—a wooden practice blade—and asked her if she wanted to try.”
That’d be almost three months after that night at the cabin. “And what happened?”
“Before I could clarify I’d demonstrate—and that I meant the first beginner dance—Alicia reproduced the entire sequence that Amanda had just failed to perform at full speed without flaw,” Cas says, mouth quirking. “To say I was surprised would be an understatement.”
Despite himself, he grins. “I bet.”
“I asked her if she wanted to try the other dances I’d taught Amanda from the first. She proceeded to perform all of them from the simplest beginner sequences—there are seven—and the first three of the intermediate without a single flaw. The fourth intermediate was the first one she had trouble with, but it wasn’t in knowledge; her speed and reflexes weren’t yet sufficient for the more intricate movements.”
“Without a demo?” Cas nods. “How?”
“The first question I asked when I told her to stand down—generally, doing eleven dances back to back isn’t recommended for your first time on the field, but she didn’t seem to realize she was about to collapse,” Cas answers. “She said she’d been watching us.”
He’s seen a few of those between Cas and Amanda, and he’s not sure he could remember the first goddamn move. “Seriously?”
“Knife dances aren’t literally dances,” he says. “At least, I didn’t think of them as such, not until I saw Alicia perform them. She said something about cheerleading and winning state competition three years in a row, it was—I have no idea, but from what I could gather, that isn’t a sport in which weapons are involved but does require a great deal of choreography and dance training.”
Dean tries and fails to remember much about cheerleaders other than vague memories of six high schools of football season and the Laker Girls. Hot girls in short skirts: he wasn’t exactly up to examining what they were doing while being hot back then. “Cheerleading. Teaches you knife dancing.”
“I need to find a recording of a half-time show for a major league or college football game,” he muses. “Alicia assured me if you think of the pom-poms as small and very specialized whips, we could learn a great deal from the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.”
Dean just nods; how did Chitaqua get these people? Something in the air?
“Knife dances aren’t meant for combat themselves, obviously; they’re an exhibition of skill, and their major use in training is to teach the movements and build muscle memory until they become reflexive,” Cas continues. “Usually, the transition is difficult for students, even extraordinary ones, but Alicia grasped the connection almost immediately. Once she knew the whole, she could pick out the individual parts of each dance and assemble them with very little effort when she started translating it to combat.
“Watching Alicia work, I realized she had extraordinary body awareness, like Mira, and as it turns out, she was instructed from a very young age in classical ballet and several contemporary forms of dance as well as gymnastics. Apparently, that’s standard for competitive cheerleaders who wish to win state, whatever that is. Her spatial awareness was even better; she always knew where everyone was, which is how cheerleaders don’t kill each other during dangerously intricate routines, or so Alicia explained.”
“The more you know.”
“We should canvass for more cheerleaders,” Cas says seriously. “She told me she was choreographer for her squad from her sophomore year, so memorizing performances and picking out the individual parts—recognizing them at all—was second nature. She also told me all the dances had a time signature, so she just followed the beat. I had Amanda teach her unarmed combat again, but from a performance perspective; she learned routines, set them to a beat, then took them apart to use as needed when fighting.”
More and more, Dean sees the teacher in Cas, the guy who really likes teaching, and hates this Dean a little more for fucking that up, too, before Cas even got a chance to realize it. He’s gonna get that back, Dean decides; time, students, whatever he needs, but it’s gonna happen. “I saw Alicia almost kick a Croat’s head off. I mean literally here, it was barely hanging on by some skin when it went down. You’re telling me she learned that from dancing?”
“She must have been tired,” Cas says in amusement. “Or in a hurry, since I assume that was during your adventures outside the walls.” Dean rubs a slow circle against the side of Cas’s knee. “What a student can do now is obvious, but what they could is impossible to know in full, and that’s very easy to overlook. I certainly missed it with Alicia.”
Huh. “That’s why you picked Rosario? Something Amanda overlooked?”
“Not exactly. I picked three, but Rosario was the one that surprised Amanda. She placed well outside even Amanda’s ‘maybe’ list before evaluations.”
“But?” Dean prompts, because he knows there’s a ‘but.’
“She didn’t give up.” Cas frowns at the knee of his jeans. “She was at every training Amanda gave in Ichabod before that day and showed up for evaluation despite being very aware she wasn’t at the standard of more than twenty of the other potential recruits. It was obvious from the moment she stepped on the practice field and she had to know it. She did almost everything wrong in every exercise, though it probably didn’t help that both Amanda and Mark were terrible at pretending I wasn’t there to observe them.”
“But she didn’t walk.”
“She didn’t walk, and many better than her did,” Cas confirms. “She finished the last exercise of the day and waited to hear the results with the others. Amanda’s observations of her at the earlier sessions seemed to indicate she has no idea what ‘giving up’ is or how to do it. Teresa concurred and later told me a terrifyingly heartwarming story of how two weeks after Rosario arrived in Ichabod, they were attacked, and Rosario—who’d never used a gun—was found in the street with a rifle she didn’t know how to use, missing every shot and turning it to use as a bludgeon when she ran out of bullets. Which is exactly what she did. She stood there and beat some sort of clawed, furry reptile to death—Teresa said it looked like the offspring of a seps and a Siamese cat, which both intrigues and revolts me in equal measure—with the butt of her rifle.”
Jesus Christ. “Why was she alone in the middle of the street shooting monsters? Where was patrol?”
“Fighting off the rest of them south of town,” he answers. “A few got away and wandered onto Main Street. Teresa—who was the one who dragged her to safety, much against Rosario’s will—asked her why she didn’t stay inside like anyone sane or—if she must shoot at it—why on earth she didn’t at least go back to safety after she ran out of bullets,” he continues, exasperation creeping into his voice that Dean bets was in Teresa’s when she was telling him about it. “Her answer was it hadn’t occurred to her to do that; the daycare needed defending, there was no one else to do it, and she could still beat it with her empty rifle to buy patrol more time to get there. Teresa won’t discuss the other times—”
“Other times?” Dean echoes. “How often does Miss Take It Old School do this?”
“Teresa won’t talk about it without alcohol, and a lot of it,” he answers. “After hearing that, Amanda and I decided to wait until we all had time for the inevitable hangover.”
“I wonder what she’d do when a Hellhound comes running at her?” Dean muses, not at all pointedly.
“Haruhi promised me that wouldn’t happen,” he mutters, giving Dean a dirty look. “No one had to teach Rosario to throw herself between danger and people who need protection; she just does it, and that kind of habit is impossible to eradicate, though Teresa apparently did try. She is an exceedingly vulnerable mountain; we must teach the mountain to be less vulnerable, for it will not move. If that is her greatest strength, it certainly isn’t one to be despised. So yes, Rosario’s progress is slow, but it doesn’t stop, because she continues to work past tiredness and common sense, sometimes even while covered in paint.”
“That’s why Haruhi needed the paint,” Dean says, enlightened. “I really want to see the pics, by the way.”
“They’re hilarious,” Cas assures him with a grin. “Rosario’s somewhat discouraged by the progress of her classmates compared to her own, but despite that, she still continues to work. If Amanda is correct about Rosario’s skill with knives, Alicia’s supplemental instruction with her will give her more confidence. When training is complete, Amanda will have reason to be proud of what she’s accomplished with her first class. Haruhi would be good without her, and with her will be extraordinary, but Rosario will be good because her instructor saw what she wanted to become and worked with her to achieve it.” Cas focuses on the knee of his jeans again. “I think Rosario will be surprised to discover what she’s capable of doing when assisted by someone who believes in her.”
Dean stares at him for a minute, then shoves forward, catching himself on the armrest and kissing the surprised bow of Cas’s mouth. There’s never a bad reason to kiss Cas, but damned if this isn’t one of the best ones. When he draws back for a breath, Cas smiles at him, thumb sliding along Dean’s jaw.
“I can’t imagine,” Cas whispers, blue eyes warm, “who taught me that.”
Before Dean can answer (not with words, obviously), the sharp knock on the door is almost immediately followed by Joe’s head and a scowl. “Cas—really, Dean? In the Situation Room?”
“Now you know to wait for permission to come in,” Dean retorts, dropping back on the couch. Running a hand over his face, he closes his eyes at the realization he may actually have made Joe wait a while, because his priorities right now are kind of—Cas. “Is this important?”
“Kind of, yeah.” Joe gives the couch a suspicious look before focusing on Cas. “Amanda’s about to go pick up our unwanted stray, wants to know if you have any last minute instructions?”
Cas makes a face. “I suppose, yes. I should also go speak to Alison at Admin regarding any recording devices they may have in inventory.” Dean nods; recording devices and also relating the ‘good enough’ plan to Alison. If they’re lucky, she may have something better; they’re not, so he doesn’t even bother with hope.
“Check on Christina’s team while you’re at it,” he says—might as well get that part out of the way—before reluctantly getting up. Extending a hand to Cas, he ignores Joe rolling his eyes in favor of Cas’s smile as he tugs him to his feet and walks him to the door. Leaning against the doorframe, he grins at them both. “Have fun. Be back in time for Micah’s perp walk; you’re not gonna want to miss it.”
After watching them disappear into the next room, he starts to go back inside (interrogators, gotta pick some, fuck his life) when a deliberate movement to his left gets his attention. Turning, he sees Alicia sitting cross-legged against the far wall and watching him thoughtfully, like it’s perfectly normal. This is Alicia; for her, normal is kind of… yeah, no idea.
“Everything okay?” he asks as he starts toward her, then for form’s sake, asks, “Were you listening at the door?”
“If I could hear anything, of course,” she answers with a frown, tipping her head back. “But the acoustics are designed to discourage that, I think. You think they did lawyer meetings with human sacrifice in there?”
“You feel it, too.” Without thinking, he extends a hand, and she takes it and lets him pull her to her feet. “You need anything?”
“I do,” she answers, nodding solemnly, and he sees the Micah notebook tucked under her arm. “I need to tell you that I lied.”