Title: The Things We Cling To
Author: lt_indigo
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Length: 3450 words
Summary: In which the bunker gains a new resident and all is not well.
Note: Set immediately after 10.10 The Things We Left Behind, but in a slight AU where Sam stopped Cas from doing the Really Stupid Thing at the end.

There was going to be hell to pay when Dean woke up and found out. Possibly literally, knowing their lives.

This time it would be an argument about the frivolous use of grace: Cas had sent both Claire and Dean off to sleep. He had deemed it to be necessary, indeed essential in Dean’s case, but Dean wouldn’t see it that way. Especially if he found out just how difficult it had been to knock him out completely: the Mark of Cain was taking its toll once more, transforming Dean into something other than simply human. Something he was glad Sam had stopped him from allowing Claire to see, because she certainly did not need any further trauma adding to her nightmares.

“Cas?” Sam’s voice sounded small, hopeless. “Dean’s not okay, is he?”

Cas knew this was one of the occasions he would be expected to lie. He knew there were benefits to lying, and at times like this, Sam was seeking comfort rather than honesty. Or he would be, were he asking anyone human. Cas was honest: he had lied to Sam and Dean once, and it had cost him dearly. He had vowed never to do it again.

“No,” he said regretfully. “But we will find a way to help him, Sam. I…”

He found there was an uncomfortable lump in his throat. This was something he had experienced a few times during his time as a human: when he had been forced to kill his sister and brothers; when Dean had thrown him from the bunker; when Sam had shunned him at the bar in Wyoming. It was not something he had ever expected to feel as an angel.

“I cannot lose him again,” he admitted once he was able to speak again.

Sam stretched a hand into the back seat and squeezed Cas’ arm tightly. Their eyes locked in the rear view in a moment of complete understanding. They both loved Dean; they both needed him to survive. Because, without him, there was nothing left in this world for either of them.

 

.oOo.

 

Castiel was grateful for the fact that he currently did not need to sleep. It meant he could get right on with scouring the library of the Men of Letters while the humans slept; Claire in his room, Sam in his own and Dean… Dean was chained to a metal cot Sam had found and assembled in the dungeon. He had cried as he did so, and Cas had taken the executive decision to knock him out too. Sam clearly had not slept well for months – probably since this whole issue with the Mark of Cain started, and he needed some rest in order to function efficiently and help Cas find a solution to this mess before Dean was lost to them once more.

He was flipping through a thick volume on mythical symbology when Claire appeared in the doorway.

“Arrows and a note?”

His lips twitched into a smile as she brandished said note at him, the one he had left by the side of the bed he no longer needed but Dean insisted on keeping made up for him. “The bunker is complex,” he said. “I have become misplaced before now.”

She smiled back at him. “You really have changed. What are you doing?”

He pushed the book aside, not wanting to worry her at this time. “It is not important. Would you like some breakfast? Pancakes, perhaps?”

She raised her eyebrows, sceptical. “You can cook pancakes?”

A gentle huff of laughter escaped him. It was almost nice to have someone who didn’t know everything about what he had gone through since the apocalypse.

“I have learned a lot since I left you, Claire. Yes, I am able to cook some dishes. I am also fully capable of making coffee and…” he paused “… hot chocolate?”

Castiel’s burger addiction was not a secret in the bunker – had not been since the incident with Famine during the apocalypse. His hot chocolate one, acquired from his brief time with Claire, was. He just wished he could still taste it properly.

He walked to the door and took her hand gently. “Come with me. I am sure that Sam will be hungry too when he wakens.”

Claire rolled her eyes, which Cas knew was a sign of exasperation, but there was a hint of a smile too. It was like the same way Dean would roll his eyes – as if he almost liked the non-human quirks of Castiel’s personality.

“You’re so different, but you still talk like an angel. It’s weird.”

“I am still an angel,” Cas said. “Mostly.”

Claire stopped walking. Cas could have dragged her to the kitchen, of course, but he felt that probably wasn’t the best course of action given that he felt responsible for her, and causing her harm would only seed resentment and more than likely precipitate another running-away incident.

“‘Mostly’?” she echoed, her eyebrows raising. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Cas sighed. “A lot has happened,” he said. “Things that I am not proud of. Please, come to the kitchen. You told me of your life yesterday; I will tell you of mine over breakfast.”

She rolled her eyes in that way that reminded Cas of Dean again. “Okay, deal.” She started walking again. “Start with the deal with driving and walking everywhere.”

He glanced at her. “That is towards the end of the tale, but I will explain.”

 

.oOo.

 

“So, you’re actually nice compared to other angels?” Claire jabbed a pancake-loaded fork at him in disbelief.

“Yeah, he is.”

Sam filled the doorway to the kitchen, barefoot and looking rumpled in yesterday’s clothes.

“You know, until he zaps you to sleep without telling you.”

Cas met Sam’s accusing gaze without hesitation. “You needed to sleep, Sam. You of all people know what happens to the human body without sleep.”

Sam scowled, but perked up almost immediately as Cas slid a plate stacked with pancakes from the oven.

“Food bribery now?”

“You also need nourishment if you are to function at full capacity,” Cas said blandly. “And caffeine.”

A cup of coffee materialised under Sam’s nose, shoved there by Cas. He inhaled the aroma deeply before taking the first bite of his breakfast.

“Oh my God, Cas, these are amazing,” he said once he swallowed.

“I know, right?” Claire said. “For a guy who can’t even taste at the moment, he’s pretty good. Now, what the hell is going on with Dean? Wings here won’t tell me, and I’m not stupid – I know it’s bad.”

 

.oOo.

 

Breakfast was finished by the time the two of them hesitantly filled Claire in on Dean’s issues of late. They left out things they didn’t think she needed to know, but between Sam’s recount of what Dean had told him about the search for the First Blade, Cas’ filling in of the background details surrounding the Mark itself, and their joint retelling of Dean’s brief time as a demon, Claire got a pretty good picture.

“Okay, so Dean’s not a demon any more, which is clearly a good thing,” she said, frowning and cradling a cup of coffee to her chest (her hot chocolate had long since been finished). “But he’s still got this Mark that can’t be gotten rid of, only passed on to someone worthy?”

“Correct.”

“And, of course, he’s not going to pass it on, and Cain isn’t stupid enough to take it back.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, I don’t think so. Sounds like he was glad to get rid of it.”

“But… Cain was living peacefully in the ass end of nowhere. He was so under the radar you didn’t even know he was there, right? No maiming, no murdering?

Sam shook his head. “No, nothing. I went back over the historical records, and there was actually a below-average murder rate in a fifty-mile radius of Cain’s farm.”

“So something happened to him,” Claire concluded. “Something stopped him from killing, from needing to kill, even when he had the Mark. What was it?”

Cas exchanged a puzzled glance with Sam. How had they missed something so obvious? Dean had even told them why Cain had retired.

“He met a woman and fell in love.”

Clare blinked slowly before giggling. “You’re shitting me, right? That’s like bad fanfic. Or a Disney movie.”

“The antagonist usually perishes in Disney movies,” Cas said with a frown.

“John Smith in Pocahontas. Kovu in Lion King two. The Beast.”

“None of those characters was the primary antagonist.”

“Cas, never mind,” Sam said hurriedly. “It doesn’t matter. So, you think Dean needs to fall in love?”

Claire shrugged and leaned back on her chair. “It’s a theory.”

“Although, I suppose in this instance, Lucifer would be the primary adversary, with Cain merely subordinate to him. Yes, I believe your premise could be sound.”

Sam and Claire both laughed.

Cas stood. “I will consult with some of my brothers – I believe they may be willing to help us in this regard. Sam, Dean is unlikely to wake until I bring him back to consciousness myself. If he does, however…”

“I’ll tell him you got a lead you’re following up,” Sam broke in. “Don’t take too long, though, yeah?”

Sam threw him the Impala keys. This was good, as Cas had left his car at the restaurant in Pontiac.

 

.oOo.

 

Sam bit back a snort of laughter as Claire’s forehead connected with the kitchen table the moment they heard the main door close behind Cas.

“Tell me he’s not that stupid?” she begged.

“No,” Sam allowed, “but Dean is.”

“And you live with six years of sexual tension? Jeez, I thought the group home was bad.”

Sam made a grand, sweeping gesture. “Welcome to my world. Hopefully you’ll see it on a normal day soon.”

Claire snorted. “If I’m right, hopefully ‘normal’ is about to change.”

Sam fiddled with the cup in his hands. “We need a plan. I’m not sure how well a cupid’s powers would work on them, with Cas being higher up than them and Dean… it takes an angel to stop him these days.”

Claire shuddered and hugged her mug more tightly to her. “Okay, so we do this like teenage girls then. Isn’t it good that you’ve got one around? Don’t suppose you’ve tried giving them seven minutes of heaven?”

Sam stared incredulously. “They spent a year in Purgatory together. If they didn’t figure it out then…”

“Pshh.” Claire waved a hand dismissively. “Purgatory is like a massive other dimension, isn’t it? Like Heaven and Hell? So they weren’t exactly in a confined space, and I don’t think they were alone either, right?”

Sam groaned. “No, I am so not considering this.”

“But you are,” Claire countered, her eyes gleaming. “You’re desperate enough to consider anything. But maybe we could make that a last resort? How thick is your brother? Would some subtle suggestion work on him?”

Sam stared. “It’s been six years.”

“But how suggestive have you and Cas been?”

He sighed. “Good point.” He waved a hand wearily. “Go on, Miss Evil Genius; give it your best shot. At this point, it can’t hurt. Just… don’t piss Dean off, yeah?”

She raised her eyebrows incredulously. “And get my throat cut? How thick do you think I am?”

 

.oOo.

 

The trouble with their master plan was that, with Cas on a road trip to Heaven and Dean unconscious, there wasn’t a lot for them to do for a couple of days. At first, Sam gave Claire the grand tour, took her on a quick road trip to the nearest Target for some toiletries and a couple of changes of clothes that would actually fit her (which she managed to seem grateful for, even if she clearly would have preferred something a little more stylish, but maybe it was just the prospect of clean underwear she was looking forward to. Or maybe it was just the relief of getting off the incredibly awkward conversation about whether they needed to pick up any feminine hygiene products) and, at first, parked her in front of Netflix.

But it seemed that Claire, for all wisecracks and street smarts, was actually smart-smart too, and was more interested in what Sam was researching than whatever show she had been watching. On the trip to Kearney, Sam had filled Claire in about what he and Dean actually did and Claire seemed interested. Cas, and probably Dean too, would blow a fuse, but Sam figured that Claire at least deserved a shot – she had survived possession by an angel and seen her family destroyed by supernatural forces: in that regard, she was no different than Krissy Chambers and her friends.

So Sam introduced her to the vastness of the Men of Letters’ library, and searching the net for weird phenomena that might lead to a case. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Claire took to sifting through the deep, dark areas of the net like a fish to water, and pretty much before Sam could even blink, she had hacked into three different police department servers to look at the official reports of said weirdness.

“Nice,” he said as he watched her flip through the report of a guy who claimed to have been mugged by Batman (who they decided had been as high as a kite at the time). “Just… don’t do that for the Sioux Falls Sheriff’s Department, yeah? She’s one of us. So’s the sheriff at Stillwater, Minnesota.”

“Sure,” Claire said easily, tucking her long hair behind one ear. “Wait, there are cops who are cool with you pretending to be FBI?”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, they’re okay with it: they get why we do it. Jody, she’s sheriff at Sioux Falls, she even vouched for us a couple of weeks ago.”

“So, this looks a lot less like an acid trip gone bad,” she said suddenly, turning Dean’s laptop to reveal crime scene photos that looked suspiciously like a…

“Werewolf,” Sam said almost casually. “The missing heart is a dead giveaway. And… yep, last Friday was the full moon. Can you send that to print? We’ll take a look at it when this is all over.”

Claire scowled at him. Sam wasn’t well-versed in Teenage Girl, but he was pretty sure he knew why she wasn’t happy about his suggestion.

“The werewolf isn’t going to be a werewolf again for another three weeks,” he pointed out. “And they’re tricky: something we never take on solo. I’d need Dean for backup. Or Cas – he’s pretty handy when he’s feeling okay.”

“Yeah, he’s quite the soldier,” Claire said with a note of bitterness.

Sam sighed, pushed the laptop away and sat down next to her. “I can’t imagine everything you’ve gone through,” he said slowly. “I never knew my mom, so I’ve never been able to miss her. And even though my dad wasn’t always around, I always had Dean or my Uncle Bobby to take care of me. I was only ever on my own when I wanted to be. But I’ve done something you have too: I’ve said yes to an angel. Two, in fact, and I wish they had both been as good to me as Cas would have been to you. Sure, he’s made mistakes, and he has a lot of regrets. But I know that having to break his promise to your dad to keep you safe is one of the things he regrets the most.

“He wasn’t himself when he came to you – he was brainwashed and hurting. He’d just found out something big and tried to warn us, but his big brothers got to him first, yanked him back to Heaven and tortured him until he promised he was loyal to them, not us. But even after that, he gave up everything to try and stop the apocalypse happening.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” she said. “He’s not a total douche. You think I’d still be here if he was?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I don’t know you well enough to guess. But Cas is a genuinely good guy, and I say that after how badly he screwed me up. He’ll be the most loyal friend you could ever have, if you let him.”

 

.oOo.

 

Claire found herself back in the library, long after Sam had gone to bed, wondering on some level why she was looking for a spell to fix the mess the Winchesters had found themselves in rather than lifting some of the more valuable items (and she had absolutely no doubt that there was a lot of shit worth a fortune on the right market) and doing a runner. God help her, she actually wanted to stay: these people had done nothing but try to help her, even though she had been completely crappy to them, and Sam… Sam was kind of sweet – earnest but honest with it. He wasn’t treating her like some kid and palming her off with excuses and reassurances: he had been almost brutally honest with her about some of the crap that had gone down over the last few years. He had, in the space of a few hours, given her life a purpose that she would never have thought possible. Sure, it wasn’t what her dad would have wanted for her, but neither was stealing and selling herself on the streets (which she hadn’t lowered herself to yet, but she wasn’t exactly a good little Catholic girl any more either).

In fact, she had realised with a bit of a shock a couple of hours earlier – just when she had been about to drop off to sleep – that her dad had died to save her from anything like this at all. She tried not to think too much about the day that her life had changed forever, other than to blame Castiel and the Winchesters for everything, but if it hadn’t been for her dad begging for Castiel’s mercy, she would have died in his place when Raphael blew her and Castiel apart. Castiel had let his sacrifice, and subsequent death, mean something rather than be completely pointless at the hands of the demon that had possessed her mother.

She had grown not to completely hate the angel. In fact, between his open admission of his faults, the mistakes he had made in between his humble acknowledgment of the roles he played in averting multiple global disasters (most of which he had admittedly played a part in starting up), and Sam’s stories that filled some of the gaps, she actually kind of admired him. He had at least tried to do the right thing, with absolutely no guidance whatsoever, and fate kicked him in the balls at every opportunity. But he never stayed down, and he had even, at the first real opportunity, gone out of his way to try and fulfil part of his promise to his late vessel.

But that was weird in itself – Castiel had no obligation to look after her any more, not after her dad had died. Maybe he was just doing it out of a sense of guilt, but she did appreciate it. Yeah, so she had showed it badly at first, but that was because she had believed that she had another family to look out for. But Randy and Dustin had sold her out to that creep Salinger, whereas she really didn’t think that Castiel, or his friends, would. Ever. These were some of the world’s genuine good guys she had found herself with here, and she kind of wanted to stay and help out. Even if said helping out was currently involving trying to find a way to get an angel to hook up with a Righteous Man who was falling from grace a little himself right now.

The Men of Letters had been a really weird bunch, she decided, as she glossed over the very scarily large section on ‘fuck-or-die’ spells. Yes, they were pretty desperate for this to work, otherwise Dean might possibly slaughter all of them in their sleep, but that was just a bit too creepy. Especially after Salinger. Claire had had enough of sleezy things to last a lifetime. Maybe a nice truth spell was what she was after?

All she knew right now was that she was going to help the angel get his man. Then she was going to help him get well. And maybe that was weird, and she wouldn’t have believed it two days ago, but if she had learned anything since she had met Castiel, it was that life was unexpected. And there had to be some good times coming to balance out all the crap, right?

 

Continues in The Mementos We Carry.