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Kevin’s whole world was the sharp pain of Crowley’s fingers digging into his throat, and the losing fight to get air into his lungs. His vision was gray, and the rush of blood deafened his ears. When the mechanical screech of static pierced his hearing and a freezing white light flashed before his eyes, he thought it was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. He was ready to go toward it.
I can save you. Say yes and I’ll take you home. The voice was clear, although it wasn’t speaking to him in any language he knew. Kevin thought he’d made peace with death days ago, when he’d realized there was no way off the houseboat except the one he was currently taking. He’d swallowed the reality down along with the ribs he’d requested for his last meal. The feeling of his teeth tearing flesh off bones had been foreign yet brutally satisfying after years of tofu hotdogs and kale.
And yet. He didn’t know who the speaker was or what it wanted, but the instant it touched his mind the will to live sprung up from where he’d shoved it down. He struggled to say yes, but he had no breath, and all he could do was shape the word with his lips: yes, yes, yes. The inside of his chest burned like skin held too long against ice, and the light swallowed him.
Kevin’s body was instantly, utterly paralyzed. He felt his hand grab Crowley’s wrist and push it away, but he had no more control over his actions than a puppet.
“Hello, Crowley,” Kevin heard himself say in a gravelly voice he’d never used before.
Crowley stepped back, stunned. A look of recognition dawned in his eyes. “Castiel? You feather-brained son of a whore. I must admit I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.” He smirked. “What does this make Ion, would you say? A triple agent?”
“Ion is dead,” Castiel said through Kevin’s mouth. “I put the bullet you left inside me through his eye.” There was a flash of dismay on Crowley’s face that was quickly hidden. Kevin knew it wasn’t really him that Crowley was backing away from, but it was satisfying to watch him retreat all the same. For the first time he felt safe in Crowley’s presence. The electrical charge that controlled his nerves had put the two of them on an equal playing field.
Crowley stopped in the center of the room and sized up Castiel. “Not quite at fighting weight, are you now?”
Kevin’s body stalked forward and he felt a sharp pain in his stomach, like his guts might be falling out. He wanted to look down, but he couldn’t.
“Do you have an angel sword on you, Crowley? Do you think you can use it before I purge you from the earth?” The light rose inside Kevin’s skull until it blinded him, and his hand reached out for Crowley’s forehead. He felt like he was in free fall inside his own body, plunging at a million miles an hour. He tried to scream, but he made no sound.
Kevin felt rather than saw Crowley fold himself inside a pocket of reality and disappear. He lost consciousness after that, choking frantically on the surge of light. He expected to wake up on the floor, but when he came to he was standing firmly upright in the middle of an abandoned theater. He didn’t know where he was, and there was still a sharp pain in his stomach that left him feeling like he might pass out again at any second. He tried to take a deep breath to calm himself, but nothing happened. He felt a stab of panic when he realized he couldn’t control his own breathing, and he struggled to get it back without budging his lungs an inch. He felt like was drowning. Take a deep breath! Take a deep breath! he shrieked, or tried to. His lips were numb and rubbery when he tried to move them.
Kevin felt a brief flutter of confusion that wasn’t his own, and then his body inhaled deeply a couple of times. Afterward he was still pretty freaked out, but he’d descended from the threatened full blown panic attack into a familiar state of intense anxiety.
What’s wrong with my stomach? Kevin demanded. I want to see it.
“Nothing.” They were alone, but Castiel still used Kevin’s mouth to shape the words. He looked down at his—Kevin’s? their?—stomach, but there was no wound that Kevin could see through the shirt.
“You’re feeling the place where Crowley pierced my true form with a bullet made from the metal of an angel sword. I had no time to heal myself before I came to your rescue.” There was a brief pause. “You’re welcome, by the way.” How strange it was to be lectured by his own voice, to feel the shape of the words pass through his mouth.
Kevin was focused on a combination of not passing out from pain and not panicking over the claustrophobia of paralysis. He didn’t have the mental energy left over to act grateful. Not that I don’t appreciate it, Cas, but where’s your body? And why aren’t you in it?
“It was too damaged to use effectively. I left it with the Winchesters for safekeeping until I could return you to them. They’ve been concerned for your safety.”
Have they? Kevin wanted to believe it, but he couldn’t quite manage to picture either one of them pacing the floor on his account.
“Of course. They can’t complete the trials without your help.” Oh. Well, that was brutally honest. It stung all the more because he was pretty sure Castiel didn’t mean it as a slight. “I saw in their minds that you’d been taken, and came to collect you.”
Kevin took in as much of the abandoned theater as he could without moving his eyes, but he couldn’t find any sign that would tell him their location. How far away are the Winchesters? Do you even know how to drive? Kevin felt certain he’d run them right off the road if he had to take over the steering in his current condition.
“One thousand, three hundred, and fifty-six miles,” Castiel said. “My driving skills are limited, but unnecessary. You should brace yourself.”
For—Kevin didn’t have the chance to complete the thought, “for what?” before the world melted away and they took off like a roller coaster going down the first hill. For an impossibly long moment Kevin was huge, and the glowing blue-green earth spun beneath him against blackness of a starry night. When he stopped short it felt like inertia might jar the bones right out of his body.
“Kevin?” It sounded like Dean. Kevin wanted to turn toward the voice, and for once he and Castiel agreed.
“I’m Castiel,” he heard himself say. And also Kevin, he offered, but Castiel wasn’t interested in giving Dean the full population count.
The Winchesters were both hovering over the bedside of an unconscious man. After a moment Kevin recognized him as Castiel’s old body.
“Cas?” Sam said. He sounded incredulous and near tears. Kevin felt a pang of envy. The Winchesters would never be as happy to see him as they were to see the guy he was temporarily housing.
“Yes, Sam,” Castiel said. “I went to recover the prophet.” He gestured demonstratively at their shared form.
“Jesus Christ, Cas, what were you thinking?” Dean said. He pointed at the body in the bed. “We found you—him, whatever—lying bloody by the side of the road. We thought you were in some kind of goddamn coma. You couldn’t have left us a post-it or something? ‘Stepped out of vessel, back in five’?”
“No, Dean, I don’t always have the time to find post-its before I go into battle on your behalf.” Kevin groaned inwardly, which was the only way he could. He felt like he was about to die, and he didn’t want to have to stand around while the two of them had whatever ridiculous pissing contest was currently brewing.
As if he’d heard Kevin’s misery Castiel said, “I should release the boy.” An icy wave of light poured out of Kevin’s mouth and eyes, and he was left swaying on his feet, suddenly hollow. He tried to take a deep breath, and his chest hurt like—well, like a massive multidimensional entity had recently burrowed into it—but his breathing was his own.
A strong arm wrapped around his waist and held him up. “Whoa there,” Sam said from somewhere behind him. “You okay, Kev?”
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “I think.”
Castiel was sitting up in the bed, muttering heatedly to Dean. Dean glanced away from him at the sound of Kevin’s voice and smiled. “Hey there, kiddo. We thought we’d lost you.”
“Nah,” Kevin said, and his voice sounded rough but familiar. He dug into his inner pocket. “I got the second half of the tablet. I know the third trial.”
Castiel levered himself heavily out of bed to join them. His white shirt was bloody down the front, the phantom wound no longer phantom. Kevin had been so sure he was going to die, and he didn’t really know yet how to deal with the fact that he hadn’t. But he knew this was better than lying lifeless at the bottom of a fake houseboat, Crowley triumphant, the trials never to be completed. “Thanks, Cas. Really.”
Castiel nodded tersely, head down like he was focused on not falling over, as the Winchesters ushered them both out into the windowless hallway.