Chapter Text
It was always the sounds that hurt the most, instead of the wounds. The sharp crack of snapping bone. The scream that reverberated through the tiny space. He felt his own throat vibrating with it. He heard his own voice, too; rough, desperate. “Cas, please,” he was saying.
Dean saw Castiel’s face, impassive from high above him, bathed in light on one side but shadowed on the other. Blank, unrecognizing. He raised the blade. It glinted in his hand as if winking at Dean.
It was always at this point that he could no longer move or speak, and so he watched as Castiel brought the blade down in a smooth trajectory, almost robotic in its flawlessness. Clean and pure as it plunged into Dean’s chest, knocking him violently backwards with its momentum.
He still couldn’t feel it even as Castiel ripped the blade free of his flesh, and he watched with detached dismay as blood immediately began to pour from the wound following the tip of the blade, as if it had been only waiting to be released from his chest.
He didn’t feel anything as Castiel brought the blade up and then back down again, tracing the same path through the air like a planet orbiting the sun. Dean’s eyes followed it with a kind of passive acceptance, recognizing the inevitability of its destination.
It was only when he felt the blood rising in his throat, hot and thick and choking, that it finally began to hurt.
He woke up gasping and sweating, tangled in sheets, hands flying to his chest in search of blood.
For a moment he lay there, hands frantically searching the skin over his heart for wounds. When his fingers came away dry, he threw back the covers to let in a rush of blessedly cool air and waited for his breathing to return to normal.
Then he heaved himself out of bed.
Ten minutes later, he was padding into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes, the fading dream still prickling at the edges of his consciousness. Yawning, he dropped his hands and froze – at the sight of Cas himself sitting at the table with Sam, apparently deep in conversation. A large pot of coffee sat between them.
“…out there, wouldn’t it already be widespread?” Sam was saying. He looked pale, the circles under his eyes standing out in a bruised purple against his skin. He looked up at Dean’s approach, frowning.
“You’re up late,” he said by way of greeting.
“You look like shit,” Dean replied. He kept his eyes carefully trained on the coffee pot and not on Cas, who was watching Dean with his usual lack of self-consciousness. “You mind?” He gestured irritably to the pot, talking to Sam despite the fact that it was closer to Cas.
When Sam only rolled his eyes, Cas mutely held it out to him instead, offering it like a sacrificial lamb.
Dean felt his jaw tighten. It hung awkwardly in the air between them for a tense moment before he reached out to take it. Cas’ fingers on the handle brushed his in the exchange, impossible for Dean to avoid, and the contact made him jerk, sloshing coffee up the sides of the pot. He turned ungraciously on his heel to grab a mug without thanking him.
From behind him, Sam sighed. He and Cas started talking again, their voices a low murmur that scraped at Dean’s already raw nerves. He flung himself into a chair at the table after obtaining his coffee, turned to Sam, and said simply, “So?”
Sam launched into a spiel without further prompting. “So, me and Cas have already looked through most of the Men of Letters books for demon cures. Most of them are just different types of demon traps, different types of exorcisms. Except for this one.” He pulled a slim, yellowing book out from under a pile of papers that Dean hadn’t noticed and flipped it open gingerly to a weathered page that had been marked by a bright pink Post-it Note. “It’s written in Latin, but Cas says it’s a book of experimental exorcisms.”
Speaking for the first time since Dean had arrived, Cas added, “It’s similar to a collection of case studies. Each section is a different experiment.”
“Right, so most of them just exorcise the demon from the person, but this person – Ingrid Moriarty – had a different…experience.” Sam cleared his throat. “Apparently, after the exorcism, she said she was an English man, and her – his – name wasn’t Ingrid, but Bancroft. And he said – get this – he said he was the demon.”
“He was the demon,” Dean echoed.
Sam nodded excitedly. “What if they accidentally cured a demon?”
He shoved the book across the table, turning it to face Dean. A single word was penciled in the margins of the page in thin, jagged handwriting: Cure? Sam jabbed a finger at it even though Dean was clearly looking at it.
“Okay,” Dean said slowly. He was grudgingly impressed. “Okay. This is something.” He took a contemplative sip of coffee. “So… how do we do it?”
Sam’s face fell, and Cas grimaced.
“Well,” Sam began, “that’s the only problem.”
Dean groaned. Of course that was a problem.
Cas cleared his throat unnecessarily. “It doesn’t actually say how to do the exorcism, it just moves on to the next experiment. We think there was another volume that detailed the experiment procedures, but it must have been lost.” Cas lifted his gaze from the book to meet Dean’s eyes in a startling rush of blue that made him feel suddenly off balance. He took a gulp of still too-hot coffee in an attempt to fix it, scalding his throat.
Sam continued, “She’ll be dead by now, but it says she had a granddaughter who should still be alive. And…” He sorted through some of the loose papers strewn across the table, coming up triumphantly with a printout from what looked like a government website. “She lives in Pennsylvania.”
“Great.” Dean tried to offer an encouraging smile through the pain. Cas watched him with an almost imperceptibly arched eyebrow.
“Cas and I will go check it out,” Sam finished. He looked a little exasperated, as well as more than a little tired, his face drawn and seeming to pull downwards with exhaustion. The invigoration of successful research seemed to have left him and he slumped over the table, elbows holding him up like the supports of a bridge.
“No, you won’t,” Dean and Cas both said simultaneously. Dean ignored this and plunged ahead alone. “You’re way too sick. You’re not going anywhere.”
Cas was looking at Dean, but at this he shifted his gaze to Sam. “Dean’s right, Sam. You should stay here.”
Over Sam’s weak noises of protest Dean said harshly, “Cas will go.”
Sam glared at Dean. “He shouldn’t go alone, dude. You go with him.”
Fuck. Dean stared at Sam for a moment, then at Cas, who wore an expression of composed inquisitiveness. He threw his hands up. “Fine.”
Cas’ lips quirked ever so slightly, which Dean found infuriating. He said mildly, “Okay. We’ll leave tomorrow morning?”
“Fine,” Dean said again, this time with all the indifference he could muster. The expression disappeared. For some reason Dean hated himself a little for it.
The next morning, Dean had decided how it was going to go. They could work together, sure. He didn’t care, wasn’t bothered by it. Cas had been under the angels’ control, and now he wasn’t, so it wasn’t like he was going to try to kill Dean again. And if he did, well, Dean could defend himself, because he wouldn’t be taken off guard this time.
He would do whatever he needed to do, hypothetically speaking, because he was perfectly capable of killing a guy who was hell-bent on killing him, even if that guy was an angel. Even if that angel was Cas.
He wouldn’t end up kneeling on the ground with a mouth full of blood again, incapable of doing anything besides –
It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to end up back there. Because Dean wasn’t going to let it happen. He and Cas may have been friends before all this, but he was starting to think they were better off as… something else. Colleagues, maybe.
That’s what he was thinking as he got ready to leave for what was sure to be the most painful road trip he’d ever experienced, and that was including the one when he had to drive five hours back to the motel with a broken arm and a nasty ghoul bite.
“Where’s Cas?” he asked Sam when he met him, alone, at the door of the bunker.
Sam shrugged. “He’s waiting in the car.”
“Oh. Okay.” Dean blinked. He picked up his bag and clapped a hand on Sam’s shoulder, trying gamely for jovial. “Alright, Sammy, don’t burn the place down. I’ll call you in Pennsylvania.”
Sam didn’t look amused. “Dean,” he said in a tone that Dean recognized as the one he used when he was about to talk about feelings.
“Sam,” Dean mimicked, attempting to push past him to get to the door.
Sam blocked him with his freakishly tall moose body. “Come on, man. It’s, like, eighteen hours to Pennsylvania. You have to at least talk to Cas about it. He was brainwashed. It wasn’t his fault.”
Dean glared at him. “I never said it was his fault.”
“Then why are you acting like you hate the guy?”
“I’m not!”
“You are.”
Dean groaned. “I’m just pissed because he took the tablet and fucked off again, okay? Not to mention that then he went and lost it.”
Sam looked quizzically at him. “Are you?”
“What?”
“Mad about the tablet?”
“What? Yeah?” Dean squinted at him.
Sam sighed, exasperation and exhaustion fighting on his face. “Okay, whatever, man. Look, all I’m saying is, it’s Cas. Just talk to him. You two always work things out.”
Dean snorted. “Yeah, and look where it’s gotten us.”
Sam didn’t reply, only opened the door for Dean with an air of resignation.
“You’d better finish the soup in the fridge by the time we get back,” Dean warned him as he left.