lt_indigo

lt_indigo

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They relocated to a pizza parlour in Lawrence and Dean hesitantly told his two companions about the last two and a half years, from his perspective; the time that God had erased in the blink of an eye, all to save Castiel. Explaining wasn’t as straightforward as it could have been, because he didn't exactly want to tell Cas exactly what had happened with the whole Leviathan thing so he was editing as he went (and very much aware that was pretty much exactly what had gotten Cas into trouble in the first place), and because Dean distracted himself by demanding to know what the hell had really happened to Gabriel back in Muncie, then Gabriel wanted to know what had just gone down in the cemetery, then they both ganged up on Cas and bullied him into partaking in the gigantic pizza, which inevitably led into Gabriel having to show Cas exactly how she tasted things like a human and therefore enjoyed food, which then brought Dean around to the subject of her new vessel.

“Not that complicated, really,” she said inelegantly around a bite of cheese and meat goodness; “I got a girl knocked up back in eighteen ninety-eight, married her. We raised our kid together, kept him off Heaven’s radar. He got a girl in trouble, married her, had a kid. He did things the ‘right way round’ –” (Dean grinned at Gabriel using air quotes, just like Cas did) “got married first, then had a kid. She got herself knocked up by a stranger, and here we are today.” She gestured to her vessel in an all-encompassing sweep of her hands, as if that potted history explained everything. Like what the hell a ‘nephilim’ was. Dean was guessing it was kind of like the angel equivalent of a cambion, but not quite the same. There were so many questions he wanted to know the answer to, but now wasn’t the time to ask them. So he limited himself to just the most important one for now:

“And she’s okay with you hijacking her body?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Said yes, didn’t she? Ask her yourself when I head upstairs for a bit. Which I am not looking forward to, by the way.”

“Perhaps you should say it once more, sister, just to reinforce the point,” Cas said, dryly enough, but Dean was sure there was a note of something bitter in there. He knew there were issues between Cas and Gabriel – that had come through loud and clear back in Wellington, and he was kind of worried that he might have to wade into that thorny issue at some point in the not-too-distant future – but he hadn’t expected Cas to be bitchy. Maybe it was just the stark reminder that Gabriel could have returned to Heaven at any point and been welcomed with open arms, whereas Cas would have had a blade shoved through his heart before he could so much as cross the threshold.

“Come on, Castiel,” Gabriel said, gesticulating wildly with her slice, “you can’t believe it’s going to be easy to convince those mutton-heads that we’re going to start singing without a hymn sheet?”

Dean hadn’t believed it could be possible for Cas to sit any more stiffly. He had been wrong.

“Those ‘mutton-heads’ are our brothers, Gabrielle,” he pointed out icily. (Which Gabriel had actually insisted on being called in public, to match her new meat suit. And then talked openly about the eighteen hundreds and getting some poor girl pregnant.)

“They’re sheep, Cas,” Gabriel argued. “You know that as well as I do. Their last orders said the apocalypse was on, and Mikey isn’t exactly around to countermand that, is he? And we’re just two deadbeat runaways.”

Okay, that? That wasn’t good. Dean’s skin tried to crawl away as the air around Cas began to crackle, but Dean couldn’t let himself react how his instinct told him to: Cas was chock-full of unchecked brand new, God-given, jacked-up mojo and needed grounding before he did something he would regret. Like levelling the city, for example. So he reached for Cas’ hand instead, trying not to think about the fact he really should be on the other side of the planet from this potential pissing contest, that Cas could smite him with a single thought, or burn his eyes out for the fun of it. He had do to something, because the last thing they needed right now, an hour after averting a smack-down between two archangels, was a smack-down between two archangels, one of whom didn’t know how to pull his punches yet.

Taking Cas’ hand turned out to be a good move, because it seemed to remind Cas that there were other, much more fragile people around them. He didn’t relax any, but his body language slid into ‘alert solider’, his tension coming from being completely aware of his surroundings and wary of the humans around him rather than pure irritation aimed purely at Gabriel without a thought for anything or anyone else.

Glancing over the table at Gabriel, who was evidently as much of a dick as ever, Dean noticed a change in her too: she was no longer sprawled inelegantly over her side of the booth, self-assured and indolently taking up as much space as she possibly could while trapped in the confines of that petite little package. Now she was sat up, her eyes scanning their surroundings carefully, subtly. And if Dean didn’t know any better, he would say that wasn’t even Gabriel in the driver’s seat any more.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, meeting his eyes unflinchingly. “I’ve shoved Gabrielle onto the naughty step until she can behave. I’m Ellie.”

This really did bring Castiel up short, his terse expression morphing into incredulity. It was the vaguest movement of a very small number of facial muscles, but it had always been enough for Dean to read him and was apparently also enough to convey his state of mind to this complete stranger.

“You know it isn’t impossible,” she said with a laugh that was much lighter than Gabriel’s. “I’ve just listened to Dean tell us that Sam did it not an hour ago, and he’s human. As you so eloquently pointed out, I’m not.”

Dean grinned and nudged Cas. “She’s got a point.”

Ellie gave them both a shy smile, which turned just a little bit devious quickly, cementing the family resemblance to Gabriel’s old vessel.

“He’ll never tell you this, but he actually has a lot of respect for both of you for standing up against Michael and Lucifer. And she is very, very fond of you, Castiel, but he is worried about going back to Heaven: she doesn’t think there will be many angels pleased to see her, and the ones that are will want her to stay and take up Michael’s mantle.”

Dean could feel himself frowning as he tried to work his head around the pronouns, given he was pretty sure that Ellie had just referred to Gabriel as both a ‘him’ and a ‘her’. Which kind of made sense, in a really weird way, because Dean was still struggling with that a bit himself, to be honest – he knew, intellectually speaking, that angels were junkless, sexless and genderless, but he was used to thinking of all of them as male (except Anna, but that was because she had gone and gotten herself all born female and everything). He was also used to Cas calling them all ‘brothers’, and said brothers appearing in male meat suits. But even Cas had borrowed a girl, that one time. Dean knew it was possible, and had Gabriel first appeared as a girl, Dean might not have trouble thinking of her that way now. He couldn’t imagine how much more difficult it must be adjusting your pronouns to refer to someone in your own family.

“-her job,” Cas was saying. He definitely still sounded irritated. “Of course our brethren will expect that.”

“Gabriel’s job was to ferry messages between God and the angels doing His work; or to humans. That and dish out justice on Earth. She isn’t like the other archangels. She was never meant to stay in Heaven, to rule.” Ellie was all hands, speaking passionately, some of her mannerisms so like Gabriel that Dean wondered where the line was drawn between them; whether or not she had been like that before her great-grandpappy started hitch-hiking in her head.

Cas glanced away from them both. It was very un-Cas-like behaviour: normally he was all about the eye contact. Dean remembered a time when he had wondered if there was something to the legends that the eyes were the windows to the soul, and that Cas might be able to see something that humans couldn’t. Then the shitstorm with the souls, and Sam’s lack thereof had happened, proving that Cas couldn’t see souls after all and Dean found himself wondering once again what it was about eyes that Cas normally found so fascinating. And why he wasn’t looking at Ellie’s right now.

“She was never meant to stay away, either,” he said softly. He sounded heartbroken, and Dean couldn’t resist squeezing his hand in a gentle reminder that Cas wasn’t alone and would never have to be again if Dean had anything to say about it. This was something he was sure he could do: Dean was used to caring for people, comforting them when they were upset. Although he wasn’t usually so touchy-feely about it, this didn’t feel like the world was all backwards, having angels hanging off his every word, teaching them about mistakes that had been made and things that were to come. This felt natural, easy, and why wouldn’t he want to comfort Cas? Cas was his best friend and the being he was in love with – it was only natural to reach out to him when he was hurting.

Ellie’s expression twisted into something pained. Infinite years gathered behind her eyes.

“Cas, I’m sorry I hurt you,” Gabriel said, her voice soft and actually sounding sincere. “I didn’t mean to. I just couldn’t bear it any more, watching Michael and Raphael change into something different, bickering and wanting me to take sides.”

“I missed you,” Cas admitted. “You were the only one who understood me, who protected me from re-education.”

Dean could have a pretty good guess what Cas meant by ‘re-education’: he had seen the results of it. Twice. Once in Cas himself. Dean had always known that something really crappy had happened to Cas when he had got hauled back to ‘Bible camp’, as Dean had called it and would continue to think of it because it sounded less hideous than ‘re-education’. Dean suspected he had some passing familiarity with what had actually been done to Cas, and it made his blood try to both boil with fury and run cold with fear simultaneously: it was bad enough that most angels were such dickbags anyway, but to torture Cas just because he was a little bit different was horrendous and Dean wished he could have persuaded God to resurrect Zachariah, with his memories of being iced intact, just so that Dean could have the satisfaction of pulling his wings off, slowly and painfully. But the thought of someone doing that to Cas, someone hurting Cas, breaking Cas, terrified him too, and he couldn’t explain that one.

But Cas was crazy-powerful now – no-one was pulling that shit on him ever again. He and Gabriel just needed to put their differences aside and work together on this one, to make sure that none of the crap of the last year and a half happened again.

Dean wished he could forget that this was Gabriel he was talking about. It wasn’t going to be that simple with her involved. Things were never just 'simple' with her involved.

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