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tikificTitle: No Expectations (Part 4 of You Got the Silver)
Fandom: Supernatural
Author: tikific
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Fallen!Cas
Warnings: Cursing. No beta.
Word Count: 2,000
Summary: Dean and Cas are unexpectedly thrown into a hunt for a pagan god in a strange parallel universe.
Notes: I sometimes read Wikipedia for fun. Blame them.
Dean regarded the pile of guns, bullets, various enchanted knives, swords, grenades, salt rounds, holy water and pointed sticks with a practiced eye.
“Looks like we didn’t do so bad for being caught with our pants down.”
Cas, kneeling on the ground across from Dean, pulling a lock pick from the hem of his flannel shirt, paused and frowned, looking down at the waistband of his jeans. He looked back at Dean. “Uh. Is that-?”
“Figure of speech.”
Cas gave a relieved nod and tossed the pick on top of the pile. Dean smiled back and chucked in a little tube of superglue he had secreted in an interior pocket in his jacket.
“I think that’s it. All right, weapons check, and then let’s get everything packed away, and give me the download on this guy.”
“He is old. Ancient among your pagan deities. He is known as a god’s god. Two-faced. Literally two-faced. He defines duplicity.” Cas picked up the sword he had obtained from Qin Qiong, the door god, and examined it, sighting down the blade.
Dean, who knew fuck-all about swords other than they were pointy, checked the magazine in his M1911. “Powerful and sleazy. So, a trickster basically.”
“Of a sort. Which is to say, I doubt any of our weaponry will carry much of an impact.”
“Hey, even if any of this shit did any good, we’re likely to drop it when the dude smacks us against the wall. Which I assume is one of his moves.”
Cas grimly shoved both his own sword and Qin’s into his belt. Many millennia of faithful service as a soldier of the Lord had done little to prepare him for a life that amounted to little more than getting slapped around by more powerful beings. And right now, just about every stripe of being was in fact stronger than Castiel. He gazed at their surroundings: grassy, rolling hills studded with what appeared to be the ruins of ancient temples. Sadness washed over him as he realized he had no idea where he was.
“I could have zapped us out of here. I could have zapped us to him, and forced his cooperation!”
“Woulda coulda shoulda, Cas. We’re here now, right? We got us.”
“A human and what’s left of a seraph.”
“Look, let’s spare the emo angel crap. And for a mud monkey and monkey-in-training we did all right with Chin Guard and Yucca Plant!”
Cas sighed. “Has it occurred to you that it was too easy, Dean? That Qin and Yuchi let us overpower them?”
“Yes, it has occurred to me, Cas. Wanna hit it?”
Somehow, the pile of armaments had been transferred back onto the persons of Dean and Cas, tucked in belts and jammed in pockets and secreted into hems and stuck in jacket linings, so they stood up and looked around. Dean inclined his head, and they headed up to the top of a low hill topped by a large piece of masonry that looked like it had once decorated the façade of a temple.
“Which way? Ideas?” asked Dean.
“One of the main structures devoted to him in antiquity was the Portae Belli. Do you see it down there?”
Dean squinted into the distance. “The pretty doors, huh? Looks like they’re open for business.”
“Opened doors traditionally signified a state of warfare.”
“Then we go locked and loaded I guess.” Dean pulled out his M1911, and Cas unsheathed his angel sword. They silently approached the temple. Despite the rough-hewn appearance, the structure appeared to be more or less intact.
They converged on the entrance, Dean on one side, Cas on the other. Dean poked his nose and the muzzle of his pistol inside. “Pitch fucking dark in there,” he whispered, grabbing a flashlight out of his khaki jacket. “Stay close.”
Dean darted inside, pointing the flashlight along with his gun.
He immediately spotted movement. He froze, breathing hard.
“Wait. Dean.” Cas’s voice was soothing, close to his ear. Cas reached out a hand and placed it over Dean’s, and gently tilted the flashlight down a fraction.
The other party lowered their own flashlight. It was Dean, staring at his own reflection. “Mirror?”
“Mirrors,” said Cas. Dean lowered his gun and swept the flashlight around the room. It was completely lined, floor to ceiling, with reflective surfaces. Everywhere and from every angle Dean and Cas stared back at Dean and Cas. And down the hall there were legions of Deans and Cas’s watching over them.
“Oh, no,” said Dean, suddenly turning around and pointing the flashlight in the direction they had just come. He stared back into another very annoyed Dean Winchester. “Okay, so I guess backtracking won’t work. Fucking A.”
Cas was silent for a long moment. He tightened his grip on Dean’s shoulder. “That way,” he said, pointing the sword.
“Is your Spidey sense tingling?”
“No. I don’t sense any arachnid activity. But I feel a slight breeze coming from that direction.”
Dean led the way through the corridors, keeping flashlight and gun pointed ahead, while Cas urged him on. “I really need to get over myself,” muttered Dean as, for at least the dozenth time, he jumped at the sight of his own reflection.
“I’m sorry I can’t get us out of here. Any more.”
“Cas, no emo crap, remember? Hey, you know what? This really reminds me of that time I took Sammy to a cheap ass county fair. I lost him in the hall of mirrors. Scared the shit out of me. Out of both of us.”
“There it is!” said Cas as they finally came upon a shaft of light. Cas started on ahead.
“Wait, Cas.”
“What?”
“This is going to make me sound like an idiot, but I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Do you have an alternative?”
Dean turned the flashlight back at the passageway they had just traversed. Many Deans and Cas’s glared back at him. “Well, whatever, I’m definitely getting sick of this shit.” He nodded and they emerged through the doorway, weapons raised, blinking into the light. He switched off the flashlight and looked around, confused. “This place seems familiar.” They were standing in a field as before, but the terrain was now flat instead of rolling hills. It resembled farmland. There was the sound of a stream running at the bottom of a small incline.
Dean turned back to see the building from which they had just emerged. It didn’t much resemble the ancient rough-hewn stone temple they had entered: this was covered in fresh plaster and appeared to have just received a new whitewash.
Hanging up over the doorway were a pair of ceramic theater masks, one smiling and one frowning. “I’d say this dude has a flair for the theatrical.”
“Comedy and tragedy,” said Cas.
“But aren’t these masks for Greek theater? I thought our dude was Roman?”
“The Romans appropriated Greek culture with impunity. I don’t suppose our man is any different.” Cas suddenly gasped. He pitched forward, his sword falling to the ground.
“Cas!”
Cas’s crumpled to his knees, moaning and wrapping his arms around his torso. Dean was down on the ground beside him, holding him. “What the hell?”
Cas cried out as suddenly his back exploded, ripping his jacket and throwing out a great dark cloud. Dean held tight and watched in horror as the dark shape growing from Cas's back halted in mid-air, hovering around them, fluttering in the wind.
Wings.
Cas had wings. Big fucking flapping black-feathered wings.
“Dude, you okay?” asked Dean, holding onto Cas’s face.
Cas glimpsed the wings and shot to his feet, his face a mask of terror.
“These aren’t mine!”
“Well, they’re sort of attached to you,” Dean pointed out.
Cas tore off the remains of his badly torn jacket and shirts and reached around for his right wing, pulling it along in his hand, regarding it with a look of betrayal. “These aren’t mine, Dean. This isn’t my true form.”
“Hey, look at me. Look at me!” Dean had Cas’s face in his hands, pulling him around. “It’s okay, Cas. Someone is fucking with us. He’s probably fucking with us: you said he’s a trickster. Look, just go with it. Like it’s a Halloween costume or something. A really awesome Halloween costume.”
Cas swept his wings in irritation. It was a pretty impressive sight.
“I wish we were back in Mirror World. I could show you. Oh, hey!” Dean had spotted the stream running nearby. Dean grabbed Cas’s arm and walked him down to the bank for a look at his reflection. “See? Pretty badass, huh?”
The wings unfurled, and then gave an irritated flap, raising a cloud of dust. “I would rather have my jacket, Dean.” Cas wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered.
“Yeah, kinda hard to manage a shirt with those things, huh? Maybe we could get you a scarf.”
Cas’s eyes blazed in a manner that suggested a scarf would not please him. But then his expression softened. “Dean. What has happened to you?”
“What?” asked Dean, peering hopefully over his shoulders. No, no badass wings grew from Dean's back. Cas grabbed his arm and motioned for him to look into the water. Dean put a hand to his face in surprise. “Oh, holy shit! I must be … what? Fifteen? Sixteen years old?” Dean looked down at his own body: his clothing was now a size too big for him. “This is pretty cool. I mean, nowhere near as cool as wings. But I feel like I have a few less miles on me, you know?”
“But you earned those ‘miles,’ Dean. I don’t think this is a good thing.”
Dean shrugged.
Wrapping his wings tightly to his body, perhaps for warmth or perhaps to minimize them, Cas shivered. “I feel … unsettled. The feeling I think you were describing before we came out of the hall of mirrors.”
Dean gave his teenage reflection in the water a rakish grin. “Like I said, play along. That’s what we had to do with the Trickster.”
“I don’t remember that incident fondly,” muttered Cas.
Both of them were distracted by a small pop over the field up behind them. Dean turned just in time to see the fiery rose bloom in the sky. “Fireworks! Cas, come on, let’s see who’s shooting them.” Dean ran back up the hill. Cas, burdened by his unwanted wings, picked his way more slowly after him.
Standing in the field outside the building there was a little boy, lighting a line of firecrackers. “Fire in the hole!” he yelled as he tossed them away. They sputtered and crackled and made a pleasing amount of smoke and noise.
Dean held his breath at the sight. “Sammy?” he whispered.
The boy turned and his smile lit up the sky. “Hey, Dean! I got a ton of illegal stuff from the Indian Reservation. Help me light it.”
Dean ran over to his little brother and threw his arms around him. “Sammy! It’s you.”
“Ugh! Don’t be such a girl, Dean!” grumbled the boy.
“We found him, Cas! We found him!”
Castiel had finally made it to the top of the hill, panting, his dark wings drooping. He regarded the boy with curiosity.
The boy pointed, giggling, to Cas. “Who’s your wingman, Dean? Ha!”
“This is Cas, Sammy. Don’t you know him?”
“He looks gooney with those wings. Gooney bird, ha!” The boy extended his arms and pretended to fly around the field.
“He won’t know me, Dean,” said Cas softly.
“Yeah, I guess he’s too young.”
“Dean. That’s not Sam. As you know.”
“No! Come on, Cas! That’s Sam. We found him.”
Cas bit his lip. “No, Dean. That’s your memory of Sam. The real Sam is still out there.”
Dean glared. “We found Sam! Cas, quit being a jerk. We found him.”
“What’s the matter Dean?” asked the boy.
Cas tilted his head, frustrated. “I’m sorry, Dean, but this isn’t Sam. We still need to find Sam.”
“Shut up! This is my brother!”
“Dean….”
“Shut up shut up shut up!” Dean screamed, holding his ears and stomping his feet.
Cas gasped. One of the theater masks that had been hanging above the temple door had somehow attached itself to his face.
“What the hell?” asked Dean, watching as Cas tried unsuccessfully to pry the grinning mask off. Dean laughed as Cas grasped at it more and more desperately, his wings now flapping out to the side with his frustration.
“Hey, he does look like a gooney bird,” Dean told the little boy, who had stopped running around and came to watch as Cas fell to his knees, still desperately scratching at the comedy mask fixed to his face. “Who’s laughing now, Cas?” asked Dean.
Cas's body twisted in the dirt, wings twitching throwing up dust.
“Dean,” said the boy. “I don’t think he can breathe.”
Dean stopped laughing and looked at Cas, wings flying everywhere, hands clawing at his face. There was blood now seeping around the mask.
“Oh,” said Dean. “Oh! Oh, god.” He looked down at the boy. “Sammy, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
“He’ll die, Dean,” stated the boy.
Dean dropped beside Cas, whose struggling had become more and more feeble. Dean pulled desperately at the mask. “I didn’t mean what I said. I don’t want you to shut up, Cas. Please! Please, don’t die!” He looked around.
Cas twitched one last time, and then stopped moving. His arms rolled limply to the side. His fingers were blue.
Dean grabbed a stone from the ground. He held it up. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. And he brought it smashing down on the mask.
Fandom: Supernatural
Author: tikific
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Fallen!Cas
Warnings: Cursing. No beta.
Word Count: 2,000
Summary: Dean and Cas are unexpectedly thrown into a hunt for a pagan god in a strange parallel universe.
Notes: I sometimes read Wikipedia for fun. Blame them.
Dean regarded the pile of guns, bullets, various enchanted knives, swords, grenades, salt rounds, holy water and pointed sticks with a practiced eye.
“Looks like we didn’t do so bad for being caught with our pants down.”
Cas, kneeling on the ground across from Dean, pulling a lock pick from the hem of his flannel shirt, paused and frowned, looking down at the waistband of his jeans. He looked back at Dean. “Uh. Is that-?”
“Figure of speech.”
Cas gave a relieved nod and tossed the pick on top of the pile. Dean smiled back and chucked in a little tube of superglue he had secreted in an interior pocket in his jacket.
“I think that’s it. All right, weapons check, and then let’s get everything packed away, and give me the download on this guy.”
“He is old. Ancient among your pagan deities. He is known as a god’s god. Two-faced. Literally two-faced. He defines duplicity.” Cas picked up the sword he had obtained from Qin Qiong, the door god, and examined it, sighting down the blade.
Dean, who knew fuck-all about swords other than they were pointy, checked the magazine in his M1911. “Powerful and sleazy. So, a trickster basically.”
“Of a sort. Which is to say, I doubt any of our weaponry will carry much of an impact.”
“Hey, even if any of this shit did any good, we’re likely to drop it when the dude smacks us against the wall. Which I assume is one of his moves.”
Cas grimly shoved both his own sword and Qin’s into his belt. Many millennia of faithful service as a soldier of the Lord had done little to prepare him for a life that amounted to little more than getting slapped around by more powerful beings. And right now, just about every stripe of being was in fact stronger than Castiel. He gazed at their surroundings: grassy, rolling hills studded with what appeared to be the ruins of ancient temples. Sadness washed over him as he realized he had no idea where he was.
“I could have zapped us out of here. I could have zapped us to him, and forced his cooperation!”
“Woulda coulda shoulda, Cas. We’re here now, right? We got us.”
“A human and what’s left of a seraph.”
“Look, let’s spare the emo angel crap. And for a mud monkey and monkey-in-training we did all right with Chin Guard and Yucca Plant!”
Cas sighed. “Has it occurred to you that it was too easy, Dean? That Qin and Yuchi let us overpower them?”
“Yes, it has occurred to me, Cas. Wanna hit it?”
Somehow, the pile of armaments had been transferred back onto the persons of Dean and Cas, tucked in belts and jammed in pockets and secreted into hems and stuck in jacket linings, so they stood up and looked around. Dean inclined his head, and they headed up to the top of a low hill topped by a large piece of masonry that looked like it had once decorated the façade of a temple.
“Which way? Ideas?” asked Dean.
“One of the main structures devoted to him in antiquity was the Portae Belli. Do you see it down there?”
Dean squinted into the distance. “The pretty doors, huh? Looks like they’re open for business.”
“Opened doors traditionally signified a state of warfare.”
“Then we go locked and loaded I guess.” Dean pulled out his M1911, and Cas unsheathed his angel sword. They silently approached the temple. Despite the rough-hewn appearance, the structure appeared to be more or less intact.
They converged on the entrance, Dean on one side, Cas on the other. Dean poked his nose and the muzzle of his pistol inside. “Pitch fucking dark in there,” he whispered, grabbing a flashlight out of his khaki jacket. “Stay close.”
Dean darted inside, pointing the flashlight along with his gun.
He immediately spotted movement. He froze, breathing hard.
“Wait. Dean.” Cas’s voice was soothing, close to his ear. Cas reached out a hand and placed it over Dean’s, and gently tilted the flashlight down a fraction.
The other party lowered their own flashlight. It was Dean, staring at his own reflection. “Mirror?”
“Mirrors,” said Cas. Dean lowered his gun and swept the flashlight around the room. It was completely lined, floor to ceiling, with reflective surfaces. Everywhere and from every angle Dean and Cas stared back at Dean and Cas. And down the hall there were legions of Deans and Cas’s watching over them.
“Oh, no,” said Dean, suddenly turning around and pointing the flashlight in the direction they had just come. He stared back into another very annoyed Dean Winchester. “Okay, so I guess backtracking won’t work. Fucking A.”
Cas was silent for a long moment. He tightened his grip on Dean’s shoulder. “That way,” he said, pointing the sword.
“Is your Spidey sense tingling?”
“No. I don’t sense any arachnid activity. But I feel a slight breeze coming from that direction.”
Dean led the way through the corridors, keeping flashlight and gun pointed ahead, while Cas urged him on. “I really need to get over myself,” muttered Dean as, for at least the dozenth time, he jumped at the sight of his own reflection.
“I’m sorry I can’t get us out of here. Any more.”
“Cas, no emo crap, remember? Hey, you know what? This really reminds me of that time I took Sammy to a cheap ass county fair. I lost him in the hall of mirrors. Scared the shit out of me. Out of both of us.”
“There it is!” said Cas as they finally came upon a shaft of light. Cas started on ahead.
“Wait, Cas.”
“What?”
“This is going to make me sound like an idiot, but I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Do you have an alternative?”
Dean turned the flashlight back at the passageway they had just traversed. Many Deans and Cas’s glared back at him. “Well, whatever, I’m definitely getting sick of this shit.” He nodded and they emerged through the doorway, weapons raised, blinking into the light. He switched off the flashlight and looked around, confused. “This place seems familiar.” They were standing in a field as before, but the terrain was now flat instead of rolling hills. It resembled farmland. There was the sound of a stream running at the bottom of a small incline.
Dean turned back to see the building from which they had just emerged. It didn’t much resemble the ancient rough-hewn stone temple they had entered: this was covered in fresh plaster and appeared to have just received a new whitewash.
Hanging up over the doorway were a pair of ceramic theater masks, one smiling and one frowning. “I’d say this dude has a flair for the theatrical.”
“Comedy and tragedy,” said Cas.
“But aren’t these masks for Greek theater? I thought our dude was Roman?”
“The Romans appropriated Greek culture with impunity. I don’t suppose our man is any different.” Cas suddenly gasped. He pitched forward, his sword falling to the ground.
“Cas!”
Cas’s crumpled to his knees, moaning and wrapping his arms around his torso. Dean was down on the ground beside him, holding him. “What the hell?”
Cas cried out as suddenly his back exploded, ripping his jacket and throwing out a great dark cloud. Dean held tight and watched in horror as the dark shape growing from Cas's back halted in mid-air, hovering around them, fluttering in the wind.
Wings.
Cas had wings. Big fucking flapping black-feathered wings.
“Dude, you okay?” asked Dean, holding onto Cas’s face.
Cas glimpsed the wings and shot to his feet, his face a mask of terror.
“These aren’t mine!”
“Well, they’re sort of attached to you,” Dean pointed out.
Cas tore off the remains of his badly torn jacket and shirts and reached around for his right wing, pulling it along in his hand, regarding it with a look of betrayal. “These aren’t mine, Dean. This isn’t my true form.”
“Hey, look at me. Look at me!” Dean had Cas’s face in his hands, pulling him around. “It’s okay, Cas. Someone is fucking with us. He’s probably fucking with us: you said he’s a trickster. Look, just go with it. Like it’s a Halloween costume or something. A really awesome Halloween costume.”
Cas swept his wings in irritation. It was a pretty impressive sight.
“I wish we were back in Mirror World. I could show you. Oh, hey!” Dean had spotted the stream running nearby. Dean grabbed Cas’s arm and walked him down to the bank for a look at his reflection. “See? Pretty badass, huh?”
The wings unfurled, and then gave an irritated flap, raising a cloud of dust. “I would rather have my jacket, Dean.” Cas wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered.
“Yeah, kinda hard to manage a shirt with those things, huh? Maybe we could get you a scarf.”
Cas’s eyes blazed in a manner that suggested a scarf would not please him. But then his expression softened. “Dean. What has happened to you?”
“What?” asked Dean, peering hopefully over his shoulders. No, no badass wings grew from Dean's back. Cas grabbed his arm and motioned for him to look into the water. Dean put a hand to his face in surprise. “Oh, holy shit! I must be … what? Fifteen? Sixteen years old?” Dean looked down at his own body: his clothing was now a size too big for him. “This is pretty cool. I mean, nowhere near as cool as wings. But I feel like I have a few less miles on me, you know?”
“But you earned those ‘miles,’ Dean. I don’t think this is a good thing.”
Dean shrugged.
Wrapping his wings tightly to his body, perhaps for warmth or perhaps to minimize them, Cas shivered. “I feel … unsettled. The feeling I think you were describing before we came out of the hall of mirrors.”
Dean gave his teenage reflection in the water a rakish grin. “Like I said, play along. That’s what we had to do with the Trickster.”
“I don’t remember that incident fondly,” muttered Cas.
Both of them were distracted by a small pop over the field up behind them. Dean turned just in time to see the fiery rose bloom in the sky. “Fireworks! Cas, come on, let’s see who’s shooting them.” Dean ran back up the hill. Cas, burdened by his unwanted wings, picked his way more slowly after him.
Standing in the field outside the building there was a little boy, lighting a line of firecrackers. “Fire in the hole!” he yelled as he tossed them away. They sputtered and crackled and made a pleasing amount of smoke and noise.
Dean held his breath at the sight. “Sammy?” he whispered.
The boy turned and his smile lit up the sky. “Hey, Dean! I got a ton of illegal stuff from the Indian Reservation. Help me light it.”
Dean ran over to his little brother and threw his arms around him. “Sammy! It’s you.”
“Ugh! Don’t be such a girl, Dean!” grumbled the boy.
“We found him, Cas! We found him!”
Castiel had finally made it to the top of the hill, panting, his dark wings drooping. He regarded the boy with curiosity.
The boy pointed, giggling, to Cas. “Who’s your wingman, Dean? Ha!”
“This is Cas, Sammy. Don’t you know him?”
“He looks gooney with those wings. Gooney bird, ha!” The boy extended his arms and pretended to fly around the field.
“He won’t know me, Dean,” said Cas softly.
“Yeah, I guess he’s too young.”
“Dean. That’s not Sam. As you know.”
“No! Come on, Cas! That’s Sam. We found him.”
Cas bit his lip. “No, Dean. That’s your memory of Sam. The real Sam is still out there.”
Dean glared. “We found Sam! Cas, quit being a jerk. We found him.”
“What’s the matter Dean?” asked the boy.
Cas tilted his head, frustrated. “I’m sorry, Dean, but this isn’t Sam. We still need to find Sam.”
“Shut up! This is my brother!”
“Dean….”
“Shut up shut up shut up!” Dean screamed, holding his ears and stomping his feet.
Cas gasped. One of the theater masks that had been hanging above the temple door had somehow attached itself to his face.
“What the hell?” asked Dean, watching as Cas tried unsuccessfully to pry the grinning mask off. Dean laughed as Cas grasped at it more and more desperately, his wings now flapping out to the side with his frustration.
“Hey, he does look like a gooney bird,” Dean told the little boy, who had stopped running around and came to watch as Cas fell to his knees, still desperately scratching at the comedy mask fixed to his face. “Who’s laughing now, Cas?” asked Dean.
Cas's body twisted in the dirt, wings twitching throwing up dust.
“Dean,” said the boy. “I don’t think he can breathe.”
Dean stopped laughing and looked at Cas, wings flying everywhere, hands clawing at his face. There was blood now seeping around the mask.
“Oh,” said Dean. “Oh! Oh, god.” He looked down at the boy. “Sammy, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
“He’ll die, Dean,” stated the boy.
Dean dropped beside Cas, whose struggling had become more and more feeble. Dean pulled desperately at the mask. “I didn’t mean what I said. I don’t want you to shut up, Cas. Please! Please, don’t die!” He looked around.
Cas twitched one last time, and then stopped moving. His arms rolled limply to the side. His fingers were blue.
Dean grabbed a stone from the ground. He held it up. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. And he brought it smashing down on the mask.
