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crime_and_ink Title: Letting the Light In (2/?)
Author: Sin_Stained_Ink
Rating: PG-13 (will go up in later chapters.)
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam/Gabriel.
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Implied non-con, implied torture.
Word Count: 2248 (for this chapter.)
Summary: AU. Castiel and Gabriel are part of a small underground group in a society where the only humans who aren’t locked away, or dead, are the servants and slaves of any angels and demons who desire them.
Notes: Nervous about posting this because it’s my first AU and my first multi-chaptered fic. *bites lip* Comments would be appreciated.
Master fic list can be found here.
1
There was blood on the walls, soaking into the carpet around him. The room was the one Alastair had always called the heart of Perdition, although Dean had never got around to asking why. Maybe it was because Alastair had enjoyed turning it into a personal Hell for him, with rows or razors, knives and wire glinting on one of the walls and another room full of weapons behind a wall. Cages and whips and even some Dean had never seen, but he’d always known they were there. And Alastair had been waiting for a reason to use them.
Punishments. Punishments for speaking when he wasn’t supposed to (never), punishments for screaming, punishments for bleeding too much, for being unable to stay conscious. The only thing there hadn’t been was a punishment for breathing.
But Alastair wasn’t there. Dean pressed himself back against the wall covered in chains. He was alone and there was something beyond the walls now, something alive and clean that he wanted to see, but dreaded at the same time.
It wasn’t as difficult to heal Dean Winchester as Castiel had expected. The majority of the injuries were recent, the older ones having been healed until it was almost impossible to see them. Alastair may have been cruel and sadistic, but he’d obviously cared enough to restore him to something resembling his previous condition when he was finished. Some of the smaller external wounds had purposefully been left to fester, and the less serious internal wounds had been badly patched to prolong pain.
It wasn’t a new situation, but Castiel wished that it was.
His soul had been damaged, split into jagged pieces by years or torment and torture, so many that it had taken most of the last few hours to put it together again, every single fragment put back where it belonged.
The injuries he was currently healing, while painful, were not particularly life-threatening: what worried Castiel was the man’s prolonged state of unconsciousness. It had been hours since Gabriel had arrived with Dean and Sam, and the latter had woken up almost an hour ago, agitated but alert. There was no physiological reason for him to still be unconscious, so the reason was definitely psychological.
“You could have a look in his head,” Gabriel suggested from the doorway, a tray piled high with food held aloft with one hand. He spun it in a lazy circle as he spoke. “Chances are he doesn’t want to wake up. Hell, I wouldn’t. Sammy-boy through there didn’t think our plan sounded fun to begin with.”
Castiel watched his grace repair the last few cuts, the wounds sealing and the scars vanishing to leave pale, unblemished skin in their place. “It would be unwise to intrude. I don’t want to deny him the choice-”
“What choice? If he doesn’t wake up, he won’t get to make any choices.”
“He’s been treated like property his entire life. I will not behave like his previous- like the demon he lived with before.”
“Have it your way, little brother, but you’ve gotta wake him up at some point, and it’ll be easier the sooner you do it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to feed his brother before I give him the bad news.”
Rather than walk, Gabriel snapped his fingers and vanished. A plate, or possibly a cup, crashed in the room down the hall.
The only way to ‘look inside his head’ as Gabriel so tactfully phrased it, was to extend his grace into Dean’s mind. It was difficult and consumed more time and energy than he could spare for a normal case where the human had regressed this far into himself. But this wasn’t a normal case.
Castiel placed one hand on Dean Winchester’s arm and closed his eyes to begin his search.
Sam ate like he hadn’t seen food for years when Gabriel dumped the tray on the table between them and made the broken glass vanish with a snap of his fingers. The first few sandwiches disappeared in under a minute, and it was only after Sam finished the bowl of soup, which only lasted a few minutes longer, that he looked up.
“Thanks...?”
“Loki. Sort of.”
Sam frowned. “Sort of?”
“I’m in witness protection,” Gabriel muttered, not even attempting to hide the bitterness in his voice. “Let’s just say I’m testifying against the angels who would kill me if they knew I was still alive.”
“Like Dean and I.”
“Yes. But they’re never going to come looking for you or your brother. Me, on the other hand? They get a tiny hint or someone tells Michael that I’m alive, he’s going to rip me to bits and use me to paint his prisons.”
Starting on the next sandwich, Sam paused long enough to ask, “Why won’t they come looking for us?”
“Because this isn’t amateur hour. They’re never going to know that you’re alive, let alone living here. No one keeps records of murders-by-hellhounds. You and your brother don’t even exist now.”
Sam’s eyes looked black when he looked up. “Like our parents.”
“Yeah. Sorry. If I’d known what would happen, I would’ve started doing something a lot sooner. There were too many angels and demons for the enslavement when I left, though, and letting them know that I’m alive-”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Sam, one hand frozen halfway to his mouth. “You’re an angel?”
“Didn’t I mention that?”
“No. I think I would remember that, even if I was semi-conscious when you told me.” He leaned forward, food apparently forgotten. In that moment, his expression earnest and eager, Sam didn’t look like he had demon blood in his body. He looked too guileless to have anything to do with demons. “So, which one are you?”
“Guess.”
“Camael?”
Gabriel shook his head. “He’s against it, though. Quiet, but against it.”
“Forcas?”
“Is an egotistical idiot. Very close with Michael, but I don’t think he knows everything that’s happening.”
Twenty-five minutes and many angels later, Sam was clearly running out of ideas- and angels. He’d come close a few times, but had never actually suggested Gabriel.
“I give up,” he said, leaning back on the bed, smiling faintly. The only thing that ruined the light-hearted statement was the way he winced and wrapped one arm around his stomach. The cravings and withdrawal were starting. “I can’t even think of anymore. You’re screwing with me. You’re not an angel. You’re Loki playing a trick.”
“I wish. It took me years to convince him to let me use his name- I had to give him a few of my abilities in order for him to agree in the end. His kids hated me. Jormungandr tried to eat me when I got too close once.”
Sam laughed. “So who are you?”
“They used to call me Gabriel.”
He froze, eyes widening comically. “Gabriel? The archangel? The bearer of truth, love and justice? God’s messenger?”
“Justice, yes. The love thing? Not so much. How truthful I am depends on the day.” Gabriel closed his eyes. “I haven’t been His messenger for a long time.”
They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes. Gabriel didn’t want to talk about God, and Sam had apparently spent enough time around other humans to be able to interpret social cues (which was more than Gabriel could say about his own brother.). He waited until Sam doubled over before he spoke again.
“I can make that stop, you know?”
Sam looked up, suddenly as guarded as he’d been when he’d first woken up. “What’s the catch?”
Helping himself to one of the chocolate bars on the tray, Gabriel started to explain. “I’ll have to burn the demon blood out with some of my grace.”
His expression went from guarded to ‘please-tell-me-that’s-more-fun-than-it-sounds’.
“It’s not,” Gabriel supplied. “If you want the demon blood to go away, and take the cravings and mindfucks with it, you have to consent. That has to be the worst thing about being an angel. We have to ask for everything.”
Sam stared at him. “You thought I’d say no?”
“No, I just don’t like having to ask first.”
Blood dripped from the ceiling, puddling on sodden carpet in front of Dean, pooling around his bare feet and-
It changed, becoming a small lake. The blood was water, lapping at his feet as he stood at the edge. It was warmer here, but there was no breeze, something not quite real about the scene.
“Hello Dean.”
There was a man standing a few feet to his left. He looked awkward, like he didn’t quite know what he was supposed to be doing with his hands. Or anything else, really. His posture was too stiff, unsure but too steady.
It didn’t take years of living with and around demons to recognise when someone or something wasn’t quite human, but it came in handy.
“What are you?” Dean asked, taking a step away from him, sinking slightly in the wet sand. One of Alastair’s knives was tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He could use it if he had to. It had hurt Azazel when Sam had stabbed him with it, so it would hurt whatever the man was.
The man- thing, demon?- didn’t move to stop him. He/it stared at him, blue eyes boring into his skull, doing nothing to help the faint trickle of pain that was beginning in the back of Dean’s head.
“I’m not a demon, my name is Castiel,” he said. Castiel’s voice was low, gravelly. “I’m an angel of the Lord, and I’m here to help you.”
“Because the other angels have been so helpful all my life, haven’t they? They helped to kill my family, sold me and my brother, let the demons run wild as long as they don’t touch angels and, oh, I almost forgot about this one: took over most of the world.” Dean snarled, pulling the knife from his jeans. “I’m not taking help from anything that does that.”
Castiel just kept staring at him, eyes wide, expression faintly confused now. Dean’s head throbbed painfully. His eyes darted beyond Dean for a moment before returning to his face. “You don’t want to leave.”
Dean looked over shoulder. Perdition was still there, sitting in the middle of the edge of the beach like some grotesque exhibit in a museum. It stretched from the ground into the sky, until it disappeared into the darkness above. He turned back to find Castiel standing right in front of him, inches from his nose.
“Are you in my head?”
“A small piece of my grace is.”
“I want you out of here. Now.”
Castiel reached out and place his hand on Dean’s arm, his skin stinging at the contact. “You recreated the room where you were tortured for over fourteen years. Why? There’s nothing to bind you there now that Alastair’s gone.”
“Go away.” There was someone screaming, so faintly that he could hardly hear them, loud enough that the sound lingered on the edge of the scene.
He tilted his head to the side, the gesture so human, but so far from human at the same time. “You’re afraid. This is all that you know.”
“Look, I don’t know what they told you up in those clouds, but it’s rude to read someone’s mind without their permission, and I sure as Hell don’t plan on giving you mind anytime soon, so stop it.”
His hand was warm, warmer than Dean had expected it to be. He’d always thought that angels were as cold as those little statuettes his mom had kept around the house, but Castiel was warmer than a human. So close, but too far away to completely pull off the illusion of humanity. His hand tightened around Dean’s arm, firm, but a million miles away from Alastair’s painful, crushing grip. Castiel’s was more gentle, closer to gentle persuasion than a forceful yank.
“I put you back together. I used my grace to put your soul back together when it was in so many pieces that the damage itself could have killed you. I’ve seen everything that you’ve seen, throughout your entire life, since I started to search for you. I know everything about you: your love for your brother,” Dean flinched. “Your mother’s death and what you saw that night. I used part of myself to heal you.”
He closed his eyes as Castiel’s grip loosened and he leaned closer until he could feel his barely-there breath against his skin. Dean couldn’t smell blood any more, or the sea. Just that odd, antiseptic smell that had been lingering on the edges on his consciousness for hours. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Open your eyes.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. I can see every single reality if I choose to, and in another life, you had to come back from something worse than this. All you have to do is open your eyes.”
“I can’t. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“It won’t hurt. There will be no demons giving you orders. You and your brother will be safe, free.”
White light was curling around them. Dean could hear it. He could feel it against him, moving like it was alive. The pounding in his head intensified. “Cas-”
There was a rustle of fabric and movement. Castiel exhaled slowly, even closer than before, until he was almost speaking directly into Dean’s ear when he said, “Open your eyes, Dean.”
Dean opened his eyes.
(3/?)
Author: Sin_Stained_Ink
Rating: PG-13 (will go up in later chapters.)
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam/Gabriel.
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Implied non-con, implied torture.
Word Count: 2248 (for this chapter.)
Summary: AU. Castiel and Gabriel are part of a small underground group in a society where the only humans who aren’t locked away, or dead, are the servants and slaves of any angels and demons who desire them.
Notes: Nervous about posting this because it’s my first AU and my first multi-chaptered fic. *bites lip* Comments would be appreciated.
Master fic list can be found here.
1
There was blood on the walls, soaking into the carpet around him. The room was the one Alastair had always called the heart of Perdition, although Dean had never got around to asking why. Maybe it was because Alastair had enjoyed turning it into a personal Hell for him, with rows or razors, knives and wire glinting on one of the walls and another room full of weapons behind a wall. Cages and whips and even some Dean had never seen, but he’d always known they were there. And Alastair had been waiting for a reason to use them.
Punishments. Punishments for speaking when he wasn’t supposed to (never), punishments for screaming, punishments for bleeding too much, for being unable to stay conscious. The only thing there hadn’t been was a punishment for breathing.
But Alastair wasn’t there. Dean pressed himself back against the wall covered in chains. He was alone and there was something beyond the walls now, something alive and clean that he wanted to see, but dreaded at the same time.
It wasn’t as difficult to heal Dean Winchester as Castiel had expected. The majority of the injuries were recent, the older ones having been healed until it was almost impossible to see them. Alastair may have been cruel and sadistic, but he’d obviously cared enough to restore him to something resembling his previous condition when he was finished. Some of the smaller external wounds had purposefully been left to fester, and the less serious internal wounds had been badly patched to prolong pain.
It wasn’t a new situation, but Castiel wished that it was.
His soul had been damaged, split into jagged pieces by years or torment and torture, so many that it had taken most of the last few hours to put it together again, every single fragment put back where it belonged.
The injuries he was currently healing, while painful, were not particularly life-threatening: what worried Castiel was the man’s prolonged state of unconsciousness. It had been hours since Gabriel had arrived with Dean and Sam, and the latter had woken up almost an hour ago, agitated but alert. There was no physiological reason for him to still be unconscious, so the reason was definitely psychological.
“You could have a look in his head,” Gabriel suggested from the doorway, a tray piled high with food held aloft with one hand. He spun it in a lazy circle as he spoke. “Chances are he doesn’t want to wake up. Hell, I wouldn’t. Sammy-boy through there didn’t think our plan sounded fun to begin with.”
Castiel watched his grace repair the last few cuts, the wounds sealing and the scars vanishing to leave pale, unblemished skin in their place. “It would be unwise to intrude. I don’t want to deny him the choice-”
“What choice? If he doesn’t wake up, he won’t get to make any choices.”
“He’s been treated like property his entire life. I will not behave like his previous- like the demon he lived with before.”
“Have it your way, little brother, but you’ve gotta wake him up at some point, and it’ll be easier the sooner you do it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to feed his brother before I give him the bad news.”
Rather than walk, Gabriel snapped his fingers and vanished. A plate, or possibly a cup, crashed in the room down the hall.
The only way to ‘look inside his head’ as Gabriel so tactfully phrased it, was to extend his grace into Dean’s mind. It was difficult and consumed more time and energy than he could spare for a normal case where the human had regressed this far into himself. But this wasn’t a normal case.
Castiel placed one hand on Dean Winchester’s arm and closed his eyes to begin his search.
Sam ate like he hadn’t seen food for years when Gabriel dumped the tray on the table between them and made the broken glass vanish with a snap of his fingers. The first few sandwiches disappeared in under a minute, and it was only after Sam finished the bowl of soup, which only lasted a few minutes longer, that he looked up.
“Thanks...?”
“Loki. Sort of.”
Sam frowned. “Sort of?”
“I’m in witness protection,” Gabriel muttered, not even attempting to hide the bitterness in his voice. “Let’s just say I’m testifying against the angels who would kill me if they knew I was still alive.”
“Like Dean and I.”
“Yes. But they’re never going to come looking for you or your brother. Me, on the other hand? They get a tiny hint or someone tells Michael that I’m alive, he’s going to rip me to bits and use me to paint his prisons.”
Starting on the next sandwich, Sam paused long enough to ask, “Why won’t they come looking for us?”
“Because this isn’t amateur hour. They’re never going to know that you’re alive, let alone living here. No one keeps records of murders-by-hellhounds. You and your brother don’t even exist now.”
Sam’s eyes looked black when he looked up. “Like our parents.”
“Yeah. Sorry. If I’d known what would happen, I would’ve started doing something a lot sooner. There were too many angels and demons for the enslavement when I left, though, and letting them know that I’m alive-”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Sam, one hand frozen halfway to his mouth. “You’re an angel?”
“Didn’t I mention that?”
“No. I think I would remember that, even if I was semi-conscious when you told me.” He leaned forward, food apparently forgotten. In that moment, his expression earnest and eager, Sam didn’t look like he had demon blood in his body. He looked too guileless to have anything to do with demons. “So, which one are you?”
“Guess.”
“Camael?”
Gabriel shook his head. “He’s against it, though. Quiet, but against it.”
“Forcas?”
“Is an egotistical idiot. Very close with Michael, but I don’t think he knows everything that’s happening.”
Twenty-five minutes and many angels later, Sam was clearly running out of ideas- and angels. He’d come close a few times, but had never actually suggested Gabriel.
“I give up,” he said, leaning back on the bed, smiling faintly. The only thing that ruined the light-hearted statement was the way he winced and wrapped one arm around his stomach. The cravings and withdrawal were starting. “I can’t even think of anymore. You’re screwing with me. You’re not an angel. You’re Loki playing a trick.”
“I wish. It took me years to convince him to let me use his name- I had to give him a few of my abilities in order for him to agree in the end. His kids hated me. Jormungandr tried to eat me when I got too close once.”
Sam laughed. “So who are you?”
“They used to call me Gabriel.”
He froze, eyes widening comically. “Gabriel? The archangel? The bearer of truth, love and justice? God’s messenger?”
“Justice, yes. The love thing? Not so much. How truthful I am depends on the day.” Gabriel closed his eyes. “I haven’t been His messenger for a long time.”
They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes. Gabriel didn’t want to talk about God, and Sam had apparently spent enough time around other humans to be able to interpret social cues (which was more than Gabriel could say about his own brother.). He waited until Sam doubled over before he spoke again.
“I can make that stop, you know?”
Sam looked up, suddenly as guarded as he’d been when he’d first woken up. “What’s the catch?”
Helping himself to one of the chocolate bars on the tray, Gabriel started to explain. “I’ll have to burn the demon blood out with some of my grace.”
His expression went from guarded to ‘please-tell-me-that’s-more-fun-than-it-sounds’.
“It’s not,” Gabriel supplied. “If you want the demon blood to go away, and take the cravings and mindfucks with it, you have to consent. That has to be the worst thing about being an angel. We have to ask for everything.”
Sam stared at him. “You thought I’d say no?”
“No, I just don’t like having to ask first.”
Blood dripped from the ceiling, puddling on sodden carpet in front of Dean, pooling around his bare feet and-
It changed, becoming a small lake. The blood was water, lapping at his feet as he stood at the edge. It was warmer here, but there was no breeze, something not quite real about the scene.
“Hello Dean.”
There was a man standing a few feet to his left. He looked awkward, like he didn’t quite know what he was supposed to be doing with his hands. Or anything else, really. His posture was too stiff, unsure but too steady.
It didn’t take years of living with and around demons to recognise when someone or something wasn’t quite human, but it came in handy.
“What are you?” Dean asked, taking a step away from him, sinking slightly in the wet sand. One of Alastair’s knives was tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He could use it if he had to. It had hurt Azazel when Sam had stabbed him with it, so it would hurt whatever the man was.
The man- thing, demon?- didn’t move to stop him. He/it stared at him, blue eyes boring into his skull, doing nothing to help the faint trickle of pain that was beginning in the back of Dean’s head.
“I’m not a demon, my name is Castiel,” he said. Castiel’s voice was low, gravelly. “I’m an angel of the Lord, and I’m here to help you.”
“Because the other angels have been so helpful all my life, haven’t they? They helped to kill my family, sold me and my brother, let the demons run wild as long as they don’t touch angels and, oh, I almost forgot about this one: took over most of the world.” Dean snarled, pulling the knife from his jeans. “I’m not taking help from anything that does that.”
Castiel just kept staring at him, eyes wide, expression faintly confused now. Dean’s head throbbed painfully. His eyes darted beyond Dean for a moment before returning to his face. “You don’t want to leave.”
Dean looked over shoulder. Perdition was still there, sitting in the middle of the edge of the beach like some grotesque exhibit in a museum. It stretched from the ground into the sky, until it disappeared into the darkness above. He turned back to find Castiel standing right in front of him, inches from his nose.
“Are you in my head?”
“A small piece of my grace is.”
“I want you out of here. Now.”
Castiel reached out and place his hand on Dean’s arm, his skin stinging at the contact. “You recreated the room where you were tortured for over fourteen years. Why? There’s nothing to bind you there now that Alastair’s gone.”
“Go away.” There was someone screaming, so faintly that he could hardly hear them, loud enough that the sound lingered on the edge of the scene.
He tilted his head to the side, the gesture so human, but so far from human at the same time. “You’re afraid. This is all that you know.”
“Look, I don’t know what they told you up in those clouds, but it’s rude to read someone’s mind without their permission, and I sure as Hell don’t plan on giving you mind anytime soon, so stop it.”
His hand was warm, warmer than Dean had expected it to be. He’d always thought that angels were as cold as those little statuettes his mom had kept around the house, but Castiel was warmer than a human. So close, but too far away to completely pull off the illusion of humanity. His hand tightened around Dean’s arm, firm, but a million miles away from Alastair’s painful, crushing grip. Castiel’s was more gentle, closer to gentle persuasion than a forceful yank.
“I put you back together. I used my grace to put your soul back together when it was in so many pieces that the damage itself could have killed you. I’ve seen everything that you’ve seen, throughout your entire life, since I started to search for you. I know everything about you: your love for your brother,” Dean flinched. “Your mother’s death and what you saw that night. I used part of myself to heal you.”
He closed his eyes as Castiel’s grip loosened and he leaned closer until he could feel his barely-there breath against his skin. Dean couldn’t smell blood any more, or the sea. Just that odd, antiseptic smell that had been lingering on the edges on his consciousness for hours. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Open your eyes.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. I can see every single reality if I choose to, and in another life, you had to come back from something worse than this. All you have to do is open your eyes.”
“I can’t. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“It won’t hurt. There will be no demons giving you orders. You and your brother will be safe, free.”
White light was curling around them. Dean could hear it. He could feel it against him, moving like it was alive. The pounding in his head intensified. “Cas-”
There was a rustle of fabric and movement. Castiel exhaled slowly, even closer than before, until he was almost speaking directly into Dean’s ear when he said, “Open your eyes, Dean.”
Dean opened his eyes.
(3/?)
