Chapter Text
The first sign that something was wrong came when Castiel stumbled.
They had just wiped out a demon nest, the latest in God-knew-how-many. Sam had lost count a long time back. Cas had been going nonstop for the past few months, as though determined to burn as many demons as possible before the fires of his grace ultimately failed him. The last time Sam had seen anyone live with such intensity, Dean had had a year left on his deal.
Dean… The thought made Sam uneasy. Midway through the hunt, a she-demon had recognized Dean. “It’s too bad your little freak offed Alistair. You’re a crap replacement. We had high hopes for you, you know? The Righteous Man?” She sneered. “Alistair was an artist. You learned nothing from him; you’re just the same as when you walked in: a butcher.” She had darted in, leaned close to Dean’s ear and whispered something before Dean drove Ruby’s knife into her throat with such force that she was nearly decapitated. Dean had barely spoken during the remainder of the hunt, had driven twenty over the limit on the way back, and now was slamming his door and stomping off to the motel room before Sam could even swing his legs out of the car.
Afterwards, Sam was never able to say if it was sound or the absence of sound that warned him, if it was Cas’s sudden, sharp inhalation or the lack of the heavy thud of the Impala’s door closing. Either way, some instinct flared in him and he spun around to see Castiel, ashen, clutching the Impala’s roof with his right hand, the door with his left, swaying on his feet, eyes wide and unfocused.
Sam ran to the back door of the Impala, catching Cas as he crumpled, his arms wrapped around the angel’s chest, his head lolling awkwardly on his shoulder.
“Dean!” Sam yelled.
His brother, now more than halfway across the parking lot, did not respond.
“DEAN!” Sam yelled again. Louder, more desperately. Cas was like a bag of wet cement. He dug his heels in to try to keep his balance.
Dean, nearly to the motel room door, looked back over his shoulder. For a moment, Sam thought he saw an angry sneer etched on his brother’s face, but the expression vanished as he took in the scene. Sam could just see his brother’s eyes widening, then Dean was running toward the car.
Cas’s eyes flickered open and he weakly raised his head from Sam’s shoulder. He made an effort to stand, but slumped back against Sam, unable to support his own weight.
“Just stay still, ok?” Sam said, rather desperately, as Castiel clutched at the edge of the door.
“What the hell happened?” Dean demanded as he ran up beside them.
“I apologize-” Castiel began hoarsely, but Dean cut him off:
“C’mon, Sam, let’s get him inside.”
“What the hell’s going on here?” Dean demanded again once they had deposited Cas on the bed nearest the door. The angel sat slumped, head hanging. His complexion still had an unhealthy grey cast, but he was no longer as deathly pale as he had been outside the Impala.
“I have fallen,” Castiel said flatly.
“We know that,” Dean interrupted.
“-And I have just lost the last of my Grace,” Castiel continued undeterred.
Silence filled the cramped motel room as the brothers stared at him.
Dean was the first to speak.
“I-I thought you had months left,” he said awkwardly, running a hand through his hair.
“My initial estimates were flawed,” Castiel said tersely. His shoulders now rested against the pillows, but his feet were still on the floor, putting his body at a twisted angle that looked horribly uncomfortable.
“Is it… is it normally like that?” Sam asked. Like his brother, he was aware that this was an intensely personal and deeply uncomfortable topic of conversation.
“Angels do not normally discuss falling.” Castiel’s eyes briefly closed, as though it cost too much effort to keep them open. “However, I believe that it is not.”
“Alright, Cas.” Dean was pacing now, though the indentation between the door and the bathroom was barely ten steps long. “What have you been keeping from us?”
“Why would you ask that?” Castiel’s voice was harsh, and there was a sudden aquiline glint in his eye that sent an icy shiver down the back of Sam’s neck. That presence, that power, he realized. That wasn’t just from his Grace.
“I’m asking because you’re the worst liar I know, and if I think you’re hiding something from me, then you are.” Dean had stopped pacing and stood with his arms crossed, glaring at Castiel.
The ferocity vanished from Castiel’s face, and he looked old and beaten and tired. Sam felt uncomfortable as Dean continued to glare, and was on the cusp of asking him to stop when Castiel spoke.
“I believe I may have been cursed.
“For the past two thousand years, angels have not been generally permitted to interact directly with humans. But there have sometimes been individuals we could not easily ignore. In those cases, we used curses to eliminate the problem. Curses did not require angels to visit Earth, so it was… acceptable.”
“Like, the opposite of ‘guns don’t kill, people do’?” Dean asked.
Castiel frowned. “Yes… I suppose so. It was an attempt by some of Heaven’s higher angels to evade the restrictions they themselves placed on their conduct. I should have seen their hypocrisy long ago.
“I was never personally involved in any of those missions, so I do not have much knowledge about the curse, only that it functions by gradually sapping the life force of its victims. It is, by all accounts, a slow, but not a painful death. Better than many of its recipients deserved.”
“How long?” Dean’s arms were still crossed over his chest, face set in a scowl. “How long does it take?”
“On a human, a few weeks, perhaps a month. It depends on the individual, if they conserve their strength… a variety of factors,” Castiel said. “On an angel? I don’t know. As far as I know, no one has ever done this before.”
“How long have you known about this, Cas?” There was a wild note in Dean’s voice, and desperation burned in his eyes.
Castiel looked down at his lap. “I was not certain until today, but I… have suspected for a few months. My Grace was vanishing faster than I thought it should, and I thought this… could… be the cause.”
“A few months? A few months?! Jesus fucking Christ, Cas, when the hell were you going to tell us?”
“There is an Apocalypse,” Castiel said curtly.
“That is not how things work here, ok? You got a problem, you tell us, we fix it. What you don’t do is go crawl off into a corner to die. Got it?” Dean glared at Sam and Cas in turn as neither of them spoke. Dean uncrossed and crossed his arms, then finally jammed his hands into his pockets, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops. “So how do we beat this thing, anyways?”
Castiel did not raise his eyes. “To the best of my knowledge, no one ever has.”
A rictus grin distorted Dean’s face. “So we call Bobby, then. Guy’s got loads of ideas, tons of experience, books out the wazoo. Anyone knows what to do, it’ll be him.”
“How to break it? No one had even seen an angel until a year ago, and now you’re asking me how to break their curses?” Bobby’s voice made the cell phone on the night stand judder. The two Winchesters huddled around the phone, Dean leaning forward on the edge of the second bed, and Sam crouching in the narrow aisle between the two bedframes. Cas still lay on the bed closest to the door; Sam had persuaded him to move his legs onto the mattress, but he didn’t look any more comfortable.
“Well, how do you break curses normally?” Dean’s voice was tinged with desperation.
“Normally, you’d kill the witch or disrupt her circle, but none of that would work here. Ya can’t kill an angel, and forget about a flock of ‘em; ya don’t have the fire power. And as for disrupting the circle, what do you wanna do, go storm Heaven? Sorry, Dean, but it ain’t gonna happen.”
“Those can’t be the only options.” Dean was begging now.
“Welp-” They could hear heavy pages being turned on the other end of the line. “Some curses have counter-curses, or spells, or blockers. A few people theorize they all do, but I dunno about that.”
“So there’s a ritual?”Dean’s whole attitude shifted, his eyes wide with excitement.
“Might be.” Sam could imagine Bobby, frowning and shrugging his shoulders. “First time I’ve heard of anything like this. I’ll make some calls, I’ll look into it, but I got nothing.
“Cas-” The old hunter’s voice was suddenly husky with emotion. “You know we’ll do everything we can for you, look under every rock if we have to.”
Castiel nodded, eyes closed, face drawn. “Thank you. Your efforts will almost assuredly be futile, but I appreciate them nonetheless.”
“ Everyone who’s underestimated this old codger has wound up regretting it, so you might be eatin’ your words before too long.
“And Dean?” Bobby sounded stern. “Don’t go and do anything stupid. This is Heaven we’re dealing with. We don’t got anything that can touch ‘em directly.
“Sam, you keep an eye on ‘em both for me, alright? I’ll call you soon as I get something.”
Dean picked up the phone, smothering it in his fist and depressing the “End Call” button.
“That’s all we’ve got?” he said incredulously. “That’s all we’ve got?” he repeated, voice rising. “Take a couple aspirin and call me in the morning?
“Son of a bitch!” Dean threw the phone to the carpet. The back flew off and the batteries popped free. “Son of a bitch!”
“Dean,” Sam said. “Calm down. Bobby’s working on it. He’s always come through for us. He’ll find something.”
“Yeah, and we’ve got what? A couple of weeks? A month, tops? For a ritual that might not even exist? That’s just great. Think you could have told us any sooner, Cas?” Dean spat.
Castiel looked uncomfortable. “I thought it was for the best,” he muttered. “I am only one individual, and there are many lives at stake in the Apocalypse.”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t fucking Star Trek,” Dean shot back. He was pacing the tight corner of the room again, this time faster. “I thought we were supposed to be a team, you know? You know what people do when they’re a team? They freaking work together!” Dean shouted the last sentence loudly enough that the corner rang.
Castiel bit his lower lip and stared at his hands which lay folded in his lap.
“Dean-” Sam started again.
“Don’t,” Dean shook his head. “Just don’t. You know what the worst part of this is?” He looked at Sam and Castiel, but did not pause long enough to let them answer. “Him just sitting there, acting like he doesn’t freaking care.” He looked around wildly, eyes sliding over Sam and Cas as though they were not what he was looking for.
“God damn motherfucking son of a bitch!” Dean roared, slamming his fist into the wall.
In the ringing silence that followed, Dean pulled his bloodied hand out of the drywall, muttered something about going out, and stomped to the door. He shattered the relative quiet again by slamming it so hard the frame rattled.
The Impala’s engine roared as Dean careened out of the parking lot. Sam sighed and leaned his head and forearm against the cool windowpane, wishing he’d done more to stop him. A faint rustling sound behind him as Castiel moved on the bed reminded him he wasn’t alone. “It’s ok, Cas,” he said without turning around. “He’ll be back.”
It was after midnight when Dean slunk back into the motel room, dragging his feet and reeking of whiskey. Sam was still awake. He hadn’t expected to get much sleep; every time Dean went on a binge, he was excruciatingly aware of everything that could go wrong, and often had to push images of Dean’s crumpled body lying in the backseat of the Impala out of his head. Still, though, the quiet lulls when no trucks were rolling down the highway gave him a false sense of security and allowed him to slip into an uneasy sleep- at least until the next big engine rumbled by.
He hadn’t taken Cas into consideration, though. He had clearly wanted to sit up until Dean returned. He hadn’t said as much, but his gaze remained fixed on the door until Sam promised again that Dean would come back, that he had done this before, that this was normal. He felt like a liar as he reassured Cas; Dean had always come back, but that did nothing to assuage his own doubts that tonight might be the night when he wouldn’t, Dean was often volatile and angry, but it wasn’t like they left a string of motels with plaster pockmarked by his fist, and Dean had been struck by so many blows, Sam wasn’t sure he could take this one more. Fortunately, Cas was in some ways still very much an angel, unaccustomed to human emotions and longing to take things on faith, so he seemed to believe him. And when Sam encouraged him to sleep, he lay down his head and slept.
But he did not sleep quietly.
A few minutes later, Sam heard Cas mumbling something. “You ok?” he asked, raising his head from the pillow.
Cas said something else, of which only the words “don’t understand” were clear enough for Sam to make out.
“I just asked if you were ok,” Sam repeated, pushing himself out of bed and stumbling across the narrow strip of worn carpet so he was standing by Castiel’s bed. He suddenly felt a bit embarrassed about his sleeping attire, boxers and a t-shirt. It was different than having the space to himself or sharing the room with Dean.
“Not what I was ordered,” Castiel muttered. Sam leaned over him awkwardly, squinting a little in the dark room. Cas’s brow was furrowed, but his eyes were closed and his fist clutched the blanket. Castiel was asleep. Sam hovered a moment more before turning back to his own bed. There was no point in humiliating Cas by discussing incidents and emotions he had never wanted to mention.
If Sam had hoped Cas might stop dreaming and fall silent, he was disappointed. Over the next few hours, Cas spoke, muttered, moaned, whimpered, and, on two occasions, cried out in pain or terror.
So when Dean staggered back into the motel room, Sam was awake and Cas was begging “Why? I tried… follow every order… don’t understand… why have you…”.
The door clicked shut behind Dean, but he still stood just over the threshold, his silhouette visible in the light that passed through the curtains. He stood lopsided, off balance from the effects of the whiskey.
“He been like this all night?” Dean asked.
“Yeah,” Sam admitted.
“God,” Dean said thickly, staring at the shaking angel. Sam thought he caught a note of sympathy in his tone.
Dean continued standing in the doorway- somewhat awkwardly, Sam thought.
“I can give you a pillow and a blanket,” he offered.
“Thanks, Sammy,” Dean slurred.
As Dean set up an impromptu bed on the floor, Castiel’s terrified babble faded away to deep, quiet breaths.