“I am the Lord Your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”
Exodus 20:2-3
+
Blood. Burnt red between tongues of fire. Glass shivering in the seams of the window frame.
(It’s not demons, Dean. I’m pretty sure they were taken as spell ingredients)
Ashes. Parting at the entrance of the night air. Latin vocalizing in a low, steady current.
(I’m not–Rowena only taught me a little, okay)
Candle wax hanging like chandelier crystals. Someone. Sitting cross-legged in the back of the room.
(Yeah, of course I’ll call if need backup–go back to your moping)
Eyes. No mistake of the moonlight or flashlight can cause that. Eyes. Unearthly blue.
“Cas–?”
Sam stumbles forward. His heel knocks into one of the candles on the floor. It collapses face forward, the stream of white wax and sputtering flame illuminating the crimson lines on the ground. A sigil that stretches all around him. Sam hears the person rising to stand and instinctively flicks his gaze back up. The death grip he has around the hilt of his angel blade hasn’t been released.
Castiel stands there, blood painted thick over his entire face. And arms and bare chest. His eyes are a screaming ocean. “What have you done?” he asks, low and lethal.
Sam feels the slickness of the angel blade sliding from his fingers and clattering to the ground.
+
one week ago…
“I’m telling you, Dean, it’s not a ghoul. Yes, I checked–would you let me finish?”
“Don’t whine at me. You’re the one who refuses to leave the Bunker.”
“Exactly. Liver and heart removed, but they weren’t ripped out. It was almost…surgical.”
“I doubt Hannibal would want thirteen-year-old meat.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! It’s not demons.”
“I’m pretty sure they were taken as spell ingredients.”
three days ago….
“So get this. They found the missing cattle. But the blood was drain–no, not vegan vampires.”
“Can you turn off the TV while I’m talking to you? Or at least turn it down?”
“The cow bodies were buried. What vampire–”
“–no I didn’t smell sulfur or any–”
“Whatever they’re summoning, it’s big. They’re not just making some basic hex bag.”
“I’m not–Rowena only taught me a little, okay?”
twelve hours ago…
“I think I’m close. I’m getting some food right now, yeah.”
“It’s not going to be Chuck, okay? I don’t think he’d kill just two cows to get our attention.”
“Okay, I know, but I really gotta get going–”
“Probably by tomorrow afternoon? Don’t wait up, Mom.”
“Yeah, of course I’ll call if I need backup–go back to your moping.”
+
“What did you do?” Castiel asks, low and lethal.
Sam feels himself drop the angel blade. Like his muscles have gone slack in the shock of seeing him–here–how he is here? It takes less than a second for Sam to pull his drawstrings back together. He bends down to retrieve the angel blade while still maintaining eye contact with the angel. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
Castiel’s eyes dim, like a waning light bulb, and he blinks a few times before they return to looking normal. The hardness in his gaze doesn’t waver, though. He pierces Sam with that look before he turns around and moves to a three-legged chair in the corner. Sam watches him shrug his white dress shirt on like his back isn’t still dripping with blood. He doesn’t bother to button it up; instead he comes back to where Sam is rooted and bends down, blowing out the small circular candles one by one.
“What are you doing, Cas?” Sam finally manages.
Castiel throws him half a glance. “Go home, Sam.”
Sam shakes his head. Like he can dislodge the coherence that the pieces in his head are forming. “You–you dug up those bodies.”
“I would have returned them and set the graves in order if the police hadn’t arrived.” He blows out the last small candle, leaving the crackling bowl of flaming twigs the sole source of light in the room. “I meant their families no distress.”
A thorny, enormous knot grows in Sam’s stomach. “The cows…?” he asks, desperately hoping for an incredulous answer of no of course not what do you think of me.
Castiel kneels over the burning bowl and shifts with his bare hands through the bundle of twigs. The galloping flames make the dried trickles of blood down his chest look warm and wet. “They were going to be slaughtered for meat. They would have died either way.”
Sam drops down so that he’s directly across from the angel, the fire dividing them. “Cas–talk to me. What are you trying to summon? Why–what are you doing this for?”
Castiel stares at him coldly. “Do you really need to ask?”
Then he moves his hand over the bowl, extinguishing the brilliance in a single breath.
The room dips into threadbare darkness. Sam fumbles for his flashlight. He can hear Castiel moving around the room, somewhere ahead of him. When Sam finally turns his flashlight on he traces the beam across the floor to where Castiel is standing by the crippled chair. The angel is studying a piece of parchment that looks fragile enough to combust if it’s folded too tightly.
“This is about Jack,” Sam says slowly.
Castiel flinches but doesn’t look back at him.
“Cas…” Sam moves forward, cautious yet steady. “We all miss him, but this isn’t–”
“Do you?” Castiel keeps his eyes on the parchment.
“Do I what?”
“Miss him.” He finally lifts his head to face Sam. “Or do you wish that you’d succeeded in imprisoning him for eternity?”
Sam bites his lower lip. He’d forgotten about that. Not deliberately. But some much had happened between that–Chuck’s betrayal, Jack’s death, the rupture of Hell, Rowena’s death, even Lilith’s return–that he hadn’t taken the time to remember what happened when everything was on the edge, right before it all plunged into the abyss.
“I–I–”
Castiel returns to studying the parchment with a small hum of confirmation. It’s unfair. Sam wouldn’t have let Jack stay in that coffin forever. He wouldn’t have. He just. Wouldn’t have. “I wouldn’t have made him stay there.” It comes out too loudly. Like he’s trying to shout over his own doubts. “I–I–we fucked up, Cas, okay? Me and Dean, I mean,” he clarifies quickly. “But you know what Jack was like at the time. He was dangerous, he didn’t a soul–”
“He was a scared child.” Castiel wheels on him, crowding into his personal space. He’s practically spitting the words. “He wasn’t emotionless. He tried to bring Mary back as soon as he realized what he’d accidentally done. He tried to make angels to help Heaven. He tried to tell me he loved me. He-he just needed to feel safe.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam says. He really is. He moves a hand onto Castiel’s shoulder. “But what you’re doing isn’t right, and I’m sure you know it, too. You can’t go around killing animals and digging up graves for whatever resurrection spell you’re trying here.”
Castiel stares at Sam’s hand like it’s an affront and steps back coldly. “You’re in no position to tell me what I cannot do to bring back my family.”
The spiked knot in his stomach returns. “I-” Sam licks his lips and tries again. This is Castiel. He can talk to him until he understands. Until he comes home with him. “I-I know what it’s like to lose someone, Cas. I’ve lost so many over the years, and it never gets easier. But you know that these kinds of things don’t come without a price. I’ve learned that the hard way.”
Castiel re-enters into frame. There’s an softness around the outline of his face. “I appreciate the understanding.”
Then he raises two fingers before Sam can duck out of the way.
+
Blood. Warmth dancing in tongues up his face.
(They were going to be slaughtered for meat. They would have died anyways)
Ashes filling his nostrils like air. He exhales before his vision fully clears.
(Do you wish you’d succeeded in imprisoning him)
Stormy sky eyes. Candle wax dripping off uplifted fingers.
(You’re in no position to tell me what I cannot do)
Sam makes a lunge forward to reach Castiel and finds that his limbs cannot move. He looks down quickly but he isn’t bound. He is, however, surrounded by a sigil in blood. It’s Enochian. He doesn’t recognize it, but he doesn’t need to understand the symbols to know that they’re immobilizing him.
Castiel sits on the ground at the cusp of the circle again. The bronze bowl is swimming with fire. The movement of the angel’s lips never stop. Not when Sam screams his name until it becomes a howl. Castiel only ever pauses to lift a leather satchel from the other side of the room. Then he returns and sits back down. He lifts the satchel high and empties the contents over his head. Blood splashes downward, like an open wound weeping from forehead to knees.
The contents of the bronze bowl sizzle as Castiel’s eyes grow brighter, that blinding celestial blue filling up the room. Sam squints but doesn’t look away. He twitches every muscle in his body, trying to find some niche where the sigil’s hold might be weaker and he can loosen himself.
Then Castiel stops chanting. His breathlessness is even louder.
A two-headed figure materializes in the center of the three-layered sigil.
“Janus,” Sam exhales at the same time that the angel says the name. The Roman god of endings and beginnings.
“What service bid you me to do?” Janus says gravely.
“I offer you a trade.” Castiel rises up, head slightly bowed. “Give me Jack Kline. His time in this world was unnaturally shortened.”
Janus’ neck creaks. One head rotates around so the other is facing forward. “Whose time offer you me in return?”
“Mine.”
“No!” Sam yells. His neck can move. It feels impossibly short even as he cranes it as far as he can. “No, no, no, Cas, stop–”
Janus eyes the angel critically. It’s a pause long enough to last a millennium.
Castiel ends the suspense by dropping to his knees. “Please,” he begs, bloodied fingers clinging to the hem of the god’s robes. “You can have my grace. It’s made from divine power. You can drain me right now, and have my life, too.”
“Cas–don’t!” Sam feels his lips splitting. “Don’t do this!”
Janus tilts both heads slightly. Then Janus descends to Castiel’s eye level and lifts his chin up with one finger. The burning twigs throw shadows over Castiel’s pinched and blood-streaked face. “What morsel of power offer you me?” Janus clucks his tongue, chiding. “Divinity has long forsook you.”
“Wait, I can offer you better. I can find you–” Janus disappears mid-sentence “–more power,” Castiel finishes faintly.
“No,” Castiel whispers, hands dropping to the ground. He stays there on all fours for a second before his chest rises. “NO!”
His arm swings, knocking the bowl across the room. Sam barely dodges in time as the bowl sails past his ear and then lands on the outskirt of the sigil holding him. As the flames spread across the ground Sam feels tingling in his toes and fingertips. The fire is burning through the sigil.
Castiel screams again, and the entire warehouse trembles. The angel is sweeping his hands over the ground, hurling candles against the wall like handfuls of dirt. Sam wiggles furiously, trying to regain enough feeling in his body to move forward. Castiel roars and Sam’s skin prickles with the rise in air pressure. The angel punches the ground hard enough to cave in the concrete. Then he slams his fist down again and again and again.
Sam finally regains enough feeling to stumble over, just as the sickening crack of bone sounds out.
Castiel doesn’t stop pounding the ground. His hand flies up and down, a flash of blood and white. Sam latches onto his arm and tries to pull him back, but the force of Castiel’s blows almost knock him off balance. Sam grabs onto Castiel’s ellow with both hands, weighing him down like an anchor. The hold barely lasts for more than a few seconds. It’s still long enough for Sam to see that Castiel’s knuckles are cracked open. His broken wrist bone is poking through ripped skin.
Sam quickly shrugs out of his jacket and then runs over to get some of the twigs from the discarded bowl to make a temporary split. He doesn’t know how slow Castiel’s healing powers are working but it’s better to wrap it up than risk infection. When he comes back Castiel has returning to stampeding his injured hand into the hard face of the ground. Sam has to jerk his arm away repeatedly until he finally stops and stays still.
The flashlight sits in Sam’s lap as he tears strips from his jacket and winds them around Castiel’s wrist. The skin is already starting to stitch back together but there’s still so much blood. The angel is turned away from him, his body twisted half around, but Sam doesn’t need to look at him to know that he’s crying. It’s the only sound in the room right now. Giant, gasping sobs.
When Sam is finished cleaning and bandaging the wounds he rests his fingers lightly around the uninjured part of Castiel’s arm. “Hey.”
Castiel doesn’t respond.
Sam brushes the back of his hand over his eyes. Clears his throat. Tries again. “Hey.”
Nothing.
“What other gods have you not asked yet?”
Castiel turns around slowly, surprise dawning in soft light over his tear-streaked face.
