Passus X: Pes dexter.

“Lucifer did what he did for power,” Castiel rumbled, deeper than the demon and more visceral, from the heart and not the throat. “I did it because my people were dying.”
“And yet you did it,” the demon who had been Lucifer reminded him kindly. “And you changed. I would have been proud of you, little cousin, if you had been one of mine.”

And under the sky        she saw them lying,
kinsmen murdered,        where most she had kenned
of the sweets        of the world!
...
It was Hildeburh’s hest,        at Hnaef’s own pyre
the bairn of her body        on brands to lay,
his bones to burn,        on the balefire placed,
at his uncle’s side.        In sorrowful dirges
bewept them the woman:        great wailing ascended.
        ... Balefire devoured
(greediest spirit)        those spared not by war
out of either folk:        their flower was gone.
Beowulf, anonymous, manuscript c. 1000 (poem older), trans. Gunmere 1910. (The tale of the woe of Hildeburh, whose husband and son warred against her brothers; XVI)

“Castiel, isn’t it.”

The demon’s hands were stiff by its sides, like something alien and forgotten. It sounded as if it was trying out the idea of interest, oiling it up and picking at the rust in the corners.

“I remember you,” it murmured. “Your curiosity. Your fascination with how things worked.”

“Hello Lucifer,” Castiel acknowledged, grim and deep and steady, and said nothing else, just stood there stiffly with the demon in front of him and the humans and archangel behind him.

Lucifer.

That explained how a demon got to rule all the other demons, and still had enough spare mojo to show off with illusions and vanity.

Archangel ghost. Just awesome.

It peered through the raindrops like they were just glass, never blinking, all focus on Castiel.

“What a strange creature you are, little cousin. Have become,” the voice drawled on, mesmerising, soft as a snake’s skin. “Look where you stand now. Look where you stand, with humans at your back,” and there, the hint of a sneer, of the lord who sullies his feet just by treading where farmers have trod. “With faith in them, the strange, broken things.”

Dean was halfway to snapping back with some sneer of his freaking own, thanks very much, even if the Lucifer demon probably wouldn’t bother hearing him over the sound of how awesome he thought he was; but Castiel got in first, mild and almost gentle.

“Have you faith in the creatures at your back, now?”

Something moved at the edge of the clearing, and another, higher up. Traces of smoke, and the shapes of corporeal demons. Not alone. Probably more where Dean couldn’t see.

Dean tried to turn his head to catch Gabriel’s eye, because why the hell wasn’t he doing anything, and if there was anyone here strong enough to take down this demon it had to be him. Only Dean’s head wouldn’t move, and crap, he knew this feeling, pinned and held by a foreign power, and Gabriel hadn’t moved, hadn’t done a thing, and surely the thing wasn’t strong enough to hold all eight humans and Gabriel? And why waste mojo pinning the humans, who could barely scratch it?

The wavery figure brushed the question aside like an irrelevance with a little flick of its fingers. “Meat,” it purred dismissively, then crept forward a step or two like a fascinated cat, voice deepening into something rough and brutally soft. “All these months, cousin. I have felt you here. Did you long to see me too? Is that what drew you in over their borders, or did you truly believe at first that you were fighting the righteous fight?”

“I did what I would not have my friends and family do,” Castiel said, all stubborn with a hint of a growl in there, and why wasn’t Castiel doing anything? Did he know everyone but him was frozen? Had he called Rachel and Anna and was just playing for time again, or something?

“Torturing demons for information? Creatures that were once your kin? Making deals with them, and double-crossing them?” Lucifer’s voice glided on, the drag and scrape of it like broken wire, and Dean really really wanted to stab it in the eyes so it’d stop looking at Cas like that. “Torturing other things, things that can feel – imps and kelpies and werewolves – to know where I am? Buying knowledge of demon magic and twisting it for your own ends?”

Not Castiel’s invention, then, the darkness. Demon magic. Demon magic, arranged by Castiel. Like he’d twisted and adapted the harmless tiny spells in the water heater, to turn the cogs more smoothly.

Torturing things that knew how to scream. Throwing up desperate solid walls between us and them to do what he needed to win. To survive.

Was that what Castiel had dreamed of becoming, and woken up gasping? Dean had learned how to do that when he’d been seventeen.

Lucifer, or the thing that had been him once, drifted forward through the rain, long bare feet sliding effortlessly over the poison-green grass.

“Do you know where I started out, little cousin?” it asked Castiel, and sounded truly (distantly) sorry to have to say such things, but all the while its eyes were fixed on Castiel’s face, ancient and hungry and hopeful.

Castiel just stood there, eyes bright and back straight, letting the demon tear him to pieces.

“I know,” he said, and there were years of guilt and resignation and determination in it; and Dean was torn between the furious urge to cover everyone else’s ears because no one else should be hearing that about Cas, and yelling at him That’s what you have to do, you clueless son of a bitch! That’s what we do! You do what you have to do and you save people so they don’t have to save themselves!, but his mouth wouldn’t move, and his head wanted to nod in its place, agree with the demon, agree to doze off, comfortable and docile and sweet.

Lucifer froze in place, like his script had gone wrong. His blink, and the little flash of bafflement, and the freaking head tilt, were so very Castiel that the muscles in Dean’s hands cramped up, fighting too hard to clench into fists. “You know,” the demon echoed softly. “Then this, all this...”

The sound of his voice was a spell all of its own, sweet and enticing. Enraptured.

“Did you wish to defeat me, Castiel? or to become me?”

Castiel, you stupid stubborn self-sacrificing dick, Dean spat inside his own head, struggling against the rich drowsiness swirling around his ankles.

Castiel kept right on standing there, awkward and a bit hunched and stubborn as all hell, and he didn’t just lie down and take this sort of thing unless he meant to. There was a plan here. Dean thought. Dean hoped.

“Lucifer did what he did for power,” he rumbled, deeper than the demon and more visceral, from the heart and not the throat. “I did it because my people were dying.”

“And yet you did it,” Lucifer reminded him kindly, his voice sweet and heavy as wine. “And you changed. I would have been proud of you, little cousin, if you had been one of mine.”

“I know,” Castiel said again, and his shoulders slumped just a bit. “Lucifer was always proud. And curious.”

“Okay, sweetcheeks,” Gabriel piped up, all vicious brightness scattering the clouds in Dean’s head, and Dean had never been so relieved and so furious to hear the smug son of a bitch’s voice, because hey, if he wasn’t paralysed what the hell had he been doing? Counting daisies? “Let’s play a game called lay off the kid, okay? Hiya, Lucy-demon,” he trilled, sweet and friendly as a hostess in a ruffled apron who’d poisoned all the tea cups, ignoring the warning glare Castiel hurled in his direction. “How’s unlife been for you? I see you’re rocking the pathetic illusion shtick. Good work, baby!”

“Why should I speak to you, Gabriel? You left us, Michael and me, to do everything on our own,” the demon said, in a voice like frost on steel that burns where it touches, not a trace of persuasion now.

Persuasion. I apologise for my persuasion. Lucifer was the lord of persuasion.

And, Did you wish to defeat me, or become me?

... So that was the final piece. Not what Castiel had done, but what it had meant, the path it suggested. Dean was so tearing Castiel a new one as soon as they got out of this, the clueless fuck.

“Oh, please.” Gabriel actually laughed, scornful and short, as he strolled casually forward to get between the demon and everyone else, and Dean found he could twitch the ends of his fingers if he tried hard enough. “Lucifer and Michael always did everything on their own, since long before I first picked up a razor.”

“The great deceit,” the thing that had been Lucifer reflected, as if Gabriel had never spoken. “Feigning your own death. I embraced mine. And they called me the liar.”

“Oh hey look,” Gabriel crooned, sugary and vicious. “The dead thing thinks it’s really Lucifer. Newsflash, pretty boy,” and there was the snarl Dean had heard in the barn. “All you are is violence and memories.”

Only maybe it didn’t think it was still an archangel, exactly. Maybe it just didn’t see a difference, because it had become a monster while it was alive, and knew it. And if that were true, it wouldn’t really have a reason to see itself any different now, would it? If that were true, it had always been what it was: the monster that one brother had made of the other.

Lucifer stared at Gabriel, unmoved and cold as the stars. “What are we, cousin, but our memories?” Then teeth flashed in the grey light, white and sharp. “And our power. And our family,” it added, pointed and delicate, savage as Gabriel underneath.

“A stellar smile and a network of trade connections covering more than a thousand square miles of the southern half of the continent,” Gabriel answered promptly.

Lucifer just stared at him, disdain and ice-cold brutality. And Castiel moved, deliberate steps forward and around and higher up the hill, pulling the demon’s fascination away from everyone else. Because Dean was pretty sure that was what it was. It wasn’t chance that had drawn this leader out, here and now. It was Castiel, the angel that the dead archangel could see itself in. And it wasn’t here to kill Castiel, whatever it meant for the rest of them. This was... something else.

Just curiosity?

Then Lucifer smiled for the first time, cool with smouldering edges, like the conversation was going just how it wanted.

“Do you know what happens when a human kills an angel, Castiel?” it asked, all casual. “When an angel kills a human?”

Castiel shook his head curtly, expressionless, letting the demon keep on talking as he picked his way through the mud.

Dean managed to curl his fingers, painfully slow, into fists.

“They are not like us,” Lucifer explained, like a teacher to a beloved but recalcitrant student, “not quite enough to become demons, or to make them. But they are something, something close. The souls sink into the ground and become rooted there, for the harvesting.”

... The hell did that mean?

“What do you want, Lucifer,” Castiel asked, almost sharply, turning to face the demon with the peak of the hill at his back.

Lucifer turned with him, facing him full on, slim back and broad incorporeal wings exposed to every hunter and the archangel, which would have been great, except, oh yes, they couldn’t move. They were completely useless, and the bastard knew it, too. Even Gabriel, apparently.

“Would you like Balthazar back, little cousin?” Lucifer asked, soft and sweet, and Dean’s heart skipped a beat. “I can find him for you. Take him into yourself and keep him. You can gorge yourself on him, and become strong. With me.”

Gabriel’s growl rumbled deep in the earth underfoot, and Castiel’s gravel-rough words seemed to roll with it and out of it, and suddenly Dean could move his wrists and curl his toes inside his boots.

“You will not make an abomination out of my brother,” Castiel stated absolutely, and there were the first traces of real anger in the harsh angle of his wings.

“No?” Lucifer’s voice smiled, beautiful and silvery and hard. “But I’m not the one who killed him, am I?”

It turned its head back over one shoulder, and looked straight at Dean for the first time. The gaze was grey and distant and deadly as the sky before a storm, and it hit Dean in the gut with a force that wrenched it right over, slammed the air out of it, and would have had him retching on his knees if his body had been his own.

“You look on that human as something like an angel, don’t you?” Lucifer murmured, distantly curious over the roar in Dean’s ears. “Perhaps more – perhaps family? What would have happened, I wonder, if Balthazar had felt that way about him? Would he have Risen, as I did?” The sound of its voice trickled on, like the rain that Dean couldn’t brush away, the little trails of it tickling their way into his eyes and down the sensitive curve under his ear. “What would happen to you, Castiel, if Dean Winchester took your blade and drove it into your throat?”

“Castiel would die,” Gabriel said, stark and furious, and Dean snarled it and his denial pointlessly along with him, feeling the sound reverberate in his throat, rolling his shoulders of his own volition.

“I don’t know,” Castiel said, with no intonation at all.

Lucifer’s face stretched into pensive delight. “I don’t know either. Isn’t it interesting to consider?”

Castiel glared flatly back at him.

The demon’s eyes were glittering at Dean, like it knew so many things he didn’t and found his silence amusing and unimportant.

… Oh.

It wasn’t Lucifer holding Dean still at all. It was Gabriel. Gabriel was pinning the humans in place, for some stupid bull-headed reason, and it was his gradual distraction that was loosening the bonds.

“He still might, you know. Humans are such fascinating animals. Such potential. So easy to persuade them to kill each other, even easier than angels.”

It turned back to Castiel and took a step closer, then another, then one more, until it was right up in his space.

“Demons, now, demons are simple beauty. Children of fratricide and fragmentation. The perfect distillation of kin’s blood on the soil.” Over the curve of dark space where wings should have been Dean could see the thing’s fingers trailing white and clean over Castiel’s throat. The savagery of his own response maybe should have surprised Dean, but if there was one thing that could never earn the right to touch Castiel like that it would be this creature, angel or demon or anything, who had given Castiel civil war.

“Sending them to possess humans – ah! The perfect recruitment. So beautiful together, so complex and fierce. And you – angels and humans, you have been working perfectly together, slaughtering each other for me, leaving the souls for me to reap.” It raised its voice and stepped back, grand and benevolent, to stand beside Castiel’s rigid form. “I am so much stronger than either of you now, cousins, because all of you – every creature here, even the humans – have shed so much blood, spilled so many souls so close to your own out onto the soil, for me to gather up.”

The souls. Gorging itself on souls. Drawing power from death.

So it wasn’t just because it had been an archangel, then.

They were all so screwed. Except that thought was way down the list next to Dean’s absolute, utter fury at this creature – not a monster, not originally, a person like Castiel and Gabriel who could have chosen better – devouring them, eating the vital part of their dead, theirs, for who knew how long. Annie, and Bill, and Caleb, and Jim, and Cassie, and hell, Balthazar, and all those unnamed other angels Dean had helped to kill himself.

All the corpses had been empty flesh. All their pyres and their mournings and their rest-in-peaces and their obsequies, all for nothing.

“See, here’s the thing,” Gabriel purred, overriding whatever Castiel had been going to say with wings puffed out all mockingly and a thread of vicious steel under the slippery soft silk of his voice. “Michael was a dick. Lucifer was a big bunch of dicks. The demon that Michael made by stabbing Lucifer?” He smiled lazily, all teeth. “Clueless, pathetic dickwad.”

Then he was flicked through the air like a swatted fly, slamming hard wing-first into the ground somewhere down the hill, only Dean wasn’t looking because as soon as Gabriel was out of the way his limbs were obeying him and he was surging forward, heaving and squelching through the mud, and Sam was shouting something to his right, and the other demons were slinking out of the forest in absolutely no rush like all the humans suddenly being able to move wasn’t really worth their best efforts, and Ellen’s gun went off, then Bobby’s, and Lucifer turned toward them and laughed.

Dickwad.

Dean fired too, even as he ran, because what the hell, and Castiel tossed a pissed-off “why do you foolish humans have to mess up all my subtle self-sacrificing devious plans” look in his direction, and sprang at Lucifer.

Ellen’s gun went off again just as the momentum of Castiel’s sudden charge swung him and Lucifer around and into a tumble. The shot skimmed past Sam’s ear and hit the outflung curve of Castiel’s wing. It bounced off and scudded into the ground, losing itself in the mud, and Dean was briefly, intensely thankful that Ellen had grabbed the gun loaded with salt and iron, not the one that could get through a fighting angel’s defences.

Not that even the salted iron rounds could do more than hurt a demon.

Lucifer flung Castiel past itself and away with an effortless heave, leaving a mess of wet black scars on the grass where he hit the ground and tumbled. Then it stalked after him, tall and dark and graceful over the mud, acknowledging the humans just as Dean got close only with a light flick of his fingers that yanked the world out from under his feet and tumbled it up and around and overhead and here and there, mud in his eyes and ears and clothes and boots and down the back of his neck, and fuck, he bet demons never had to bother about how to wash all this crap out. Someone’s gun went off, and he sure hoped that had been deliberate because there was a gasp or grunt of pain after it that sounded too human, and he must have fumbled his own because his hands were empty, crap crap crap.

He slammed into a body, warm and familiar, and lay there gasping for a moment with Sam, trying to work out which way was up and if anything was too seriously broken.

Then there was the heavy squelch of a footstep nearby and they were both of them struggling to their feet in double-quick time, blinking through mud, hands grabbing their way up each other’s shins and thighs and sides and arms as the only solid reality until they could get their knives out and drive them at the blurred, grinning, horned face in front of them, because when there’s a demon coming for your throat it isn’t really the best time to take stock of exactly how everyone else is doing. No time to think, just the brutally familiar rhythm of your body and your brother’s body and the way you move together when there’s an evil son of a bitch trying to drag you down.

Thrust, parry, shoulder to a rock-hard chest and hope you could knock it over and keep your own feet, trust Sammy to cover for a second if your foot went out from under you in the mud, haul the bitch back by the hair if it got anywhere too near him when he was off balance, go for the hamstrings or the spine to make the body harder to control, get knocked head over ass again by an invisible smack-down when it got bored playing and decided to go by demon rules. Rinse, repeat, with occasional moments of demonic choking and the first few words of the exorcism ritual spat out before it could slam a fist (or, hell, a rock) into your throat. Mud in your goddamn mouth.Other bodies somewhere, in the rain, curses and shouts and yelps and staggering and falling.

There were only two weapons here that could shiv even a regular demon, and both of them belonged to the angels. And neither angel had even tried to get their sword up close and personal with Lucifer’s throat, so either this demon reminded them too much of the angel he had been for them to want to stab him, or for some reason they thought it wouldn’t work. And if neither angel was going to try it, that brought them right back to the no other useful weapon point, and Gabriel definitely wasn’t going to volunteer to let a human touch his shiny golden archangel trophy and there was no way Dean was letting anyone take Castiel’s sword away when Lucifer was all up in his business, so they were kind of stuck. And hell, this was why you needed to plan ahead with demons, because right now Dean would give his horse for a handy pre-drawn demon trap or two.

Just for a moment he got clear enough to lift his head and shake the water out of his eyes and squint up the hill. Ellen and Rufus had the civilians in a loose huddle not much further up, and they were okay for now (one demon carcase on the ground, must have pinned it long enough for exorcism, and Colt was on the ground but still sitting up, still holding his gun, no demons coming right at them). Bobby and Gwen were higher up, with Gabriel, and it looked like they were watching his back as he tore his way with sword and elbows and fury through the cluster of demons there, trying to get to Castiel, only Dean couldn’t see Cas, just Lucifer standing over something, and -

Something savage and too hot to be human barrelled into Dean’s side and knocked him sprawling and came down on his back, and he snarled and fought savagely, jabbing back at it with elbow and knife and twisting under its claws, hooking his fingers into its eyes until it squealed and sank heavy serrated teeth into his shoulder, and fuck, that was going to be nasty.

Then the weight was dragged off his shoulders, back onto his hips as Sam growled something vicious and sank his knife into flesh with that sick damp punch of a noise. Dean swore and spat mud out of his mouth and saw suddenly, with the sudden weird clarity of pain, exactly what was in front of him.

Castiel’s footprint, from so much earlier, still sunk deep and deliberate into black earth. A small dark foot-shaped pond, that quivered under Dean’s breath.

The rainwater gathered in it was overflowing now, a slim trickle, following the line of a little trench where Castiel’s big toe had dragged just a bit (which he never did, always feet straight down and straight up). And the next footprint was straight in front, not off to one side, so that the fine rivulet cut through the weakened grass, following the angle of the slope, straight into the heel of the next pool. One blobby black line, footprint to footprint, all the way down the hill.

And Dean remembered, like he was seeing that too, the other line on the other side of the field (but at an angle, not parallel), and the sharp turn that Castiel had made in his pacing just before Dean had whistled. The way it just looked like a single innocuous line if you stepped over it, and the way you couldn’t see it unless you were right there because the grass was shielding it, and Castiel asking, not so long ago, how large can one draw a demon trap?

And the rain had only got heavier since they’d arrived, made the water pool faster to seal the trap sooner: but a creature who knew the skies and the clouds would have predicted that. Almost closed. No wonder Castiel had been playing for time. No wonder Gabriel had been trying to keep the humans from fighting.

Looked like Dean owed Castiel a horse. If the stupid stubborn secretive bastard was still alive.

The demon squirming on Dean’s back twisted itself off and away and scurried into the forest with a howl, because apparently even Lucifer couldn’t terrify the vicious self-serving things to stick around when they were getting their asses kicked, and then Sam’s worried muddy scrunched-up face was taking over his vision as Dean got hauled to his feet.

“Okay?”

“Fine. Cas?” He stumbled as he got upright, one knee twinging savagely and almost giving out on him, but he was already craning to see up the hill. And there, Castiel was on his feet again, ducking and dancing away with a buffeting twist of his wings to keep from getting caught between two demons, movements quick and precise and beautiful as he spun and drove his sword into the first one’s throat. Only Lucifer was... just watching, creepily, like some proud parent putting a kid through its paces, or...

Dean didn’t stop to check on anyone else, because, priorities. “Sam, the lines. One big demon trap. There’s gotta be a couple of points around where it hasn’t closed yet. Got it?” And thank crap for his brother’s quick brain and the way he’d ask endless reams of questions everywhere but on a hunt. Sam only needed a quick glance at the ground and he was off, racing up the hill, following the line with his eyes flicking sharp and quick between that and the fighting, while Dean careened down the hill and tried not to go so fast he’d slip and come down on his face.

One gap near the first corner, where the little trickle had diverted around a pebble and wandered off away from the footprint in front of it. A quick stamp of the boot without slowing, because they were racing against time to close this before the demons cottoned on. A second and third and fourth on the line that cut low across the face of the hill, where gravity wasn’t on their side (although Castiel had trodden this line almost solid, obviously deliberate, must have been reckoning on Lucifer entering the scene high enough up the hill not to see this one), then nothing all the way up the far side of the clearing where the way was so steep that it had already cut Castiel’s footprints into a sluggish cascade, and fuck, Ellen and Rufus were struggling with three demons between them while Jody stood back with steady breath and a bared knife over Colt, and one of the demons was wearing Barnes, so Dean fumbled the hand signal for stall as long as you can haphazardly in their direction, shoved down the burn in his lungs and the screaming ache in his knee, and slip-scrambled faster up the slope.

“You are mine, little cousin,” Lucifer was saying, like something so obvious that it was kind of bored by having to say so, and if Castiel made a reply Dean didn’t hear it.

There was another gap just up ahead, and Sam had rounded what had to be the uppermost point of the star and there was a demon closing in on him. Dean made a lunge for the mocking little tuft of green, and, because this was his life, some random demon mojo grabbed him and hurled him through the air until he smashed into a tree.

What was it with demons and flinging things, seriously? Dean’s muscles were going to be whinging for days. And he was pretty sure his knee was screwed up again. Hell. He hated his shitty knee.

He hung there in midair, pinned sideways against the tree, and glared daggers at the smirking lowlife thing picking its leisurely way towards him from the wasp-like cluster around Castiel and Lucifer. Apparently this one wanted a toy all to itself. How nice. And Dean would love to oblige – no really, he was all about demons getting their smoky little rocks off, only right now there was another demon probably getting its hands around Sammy’s neck (except Dean couldn’t turn his head far enough to see), and what might be the last flaw in the trap was right there and Dean just didn’t have time.

And where the hell was Castiel’s damn backup?

Bobby and Gwen and (shit) even Gabriel were standing frozen, held immobile like little set pieces, watching the fight. Castiel was the stag in the middle of a pack of baying demonic hounds, and he moved light as a stag too, countering his weight on his wings as he slashed and ducked and slipped and swerved and leaped so that he never sank into the mud. And Lucifer was just prowling, letting the demons do the taunting and the tiring, waiting for Castiel to drop like an over-feisty colt who needed breaking in. Talking, a long low murmur of sound that Dean couldn’t catch but that made Gabriel’s chest heave and his eyes burn and the cords stand out in his neck and forearms as he fought the binding, as the archangel demon drew closer and closer and still held him trapped.

Then Lucifer laughed like old regret and savage triumph, and slipped up close to wind its arms around Gabriel’s neck from behind, to wrap him in the silvery darkness of its wings and pin his arms to his sides, press against his back and nuzzle its mouth in against his ear.

Gabriel screamed.

The blast-wave spun out across the field – panic, gut-deep and uncontrolled, lashing out like it could shove the world away. Dean was on his hands and knees with a fallen branch digging painfully into his ribs, heart rate bolting, scrabbling to block out the sound spiking raw and jagged through his head. But he had a job to do, so he was on his feet in a moment, because the demon who’d been holding him was knocked flat on the ground and twitching and even Lucifer was staggering backwards as Gabriel’s sword flashed a bright, desperate arc through the air at nothing.

Dean slammed his fist into the earth, crushing frail white roots into black ooze, and felt the power jolt through his body as the trap was closed.

Lucifer roared.

It was disintegrating in the air, wings and handsome face tearing away into shreds of darkness like rotten old rags. The other demons were blinking and shaking, some of them sprawled on the ground, reeling from the double blow of Gabriel’s panic boiling over (or whatever the hell that had been) and having all their power but that of their muscles suddenly pulled out from under them. Sam shoved the demon he’d been grappling over the line into the vast trap, stormed in after it to get it properly subdued.

Then Lucifer’s illusions were gone, and it was just a towering grey demon, swept-back horns and goat’s feet and butt-ugly flattened face and all, no trace of beauty left. Gabriel was crouching in front of it like a mad wolf, lips pulled back over a snarl, the cornered animal gone savage that had closed its grip around Sam’s neck back in the barn.

Castiel’s sword flashed wet and bright, and two demons sparked red and dropped to the ground. The others around him fell back, all consternation and indecisive growls like beaten dogs, not looking at him anymore, unable to flee and unwilling to attack. Dean had just time to notice that Ellen and the others downhill grappling with their demons before Castiel said, “Gabriel.”

It wasn’t persuasive, or gentle, like someone trying to talk down a desperate man. It was testy, and kind of impatient, the sort of voice that said he didn’t have time for sweet-talking and was going to be hauling his brother over the coals as soon as they had a minute because he was being insufferable again. Only there was love in there too, and an absolute trust that Gabriel would hear him, and would listen.

Dean knew that tone.

It turned Gabriel’s head, and Lucifer’s too.

Gabriel took a grudging step back, wings stiff as horn and sword an unwavering line of golden fire slanting defensively across his body.

Lucifer didn’t even look at him. He was too busy staring at Castiel like he’d never seen him before, like his cute little baby colt had turned out to be a kelpie and dragged him underwater into the tangle of reeds that would hold him there until he drowned.

Castiel looked slightly uncomfortable.

“It is... not only demons that I have learned from,” he provided after a minute.

Which was completely unnecessary, in Dean’s opinion. Obviously he’d picked up human stuff too, like sigils and traps, because he was awesome, and this was the time for pointing and gloating. And also, because Lucifer was distracted, for Dean to start squelching sneakily towards them.

“This is a game you’ve played,” Lucifer said, in a voice brittle as frost on glass.

Castiel acknowledged it with a little dip of his head, and did not lower his sword.

“The disciple,” (and he glanced down for a moment at the blood on his hands, smearing in the rain), “the traitor,” (and Gabriel’s teeth gleamed wild as he grinned without humour), “and the prey” (as his eyes flickered for a moment towards Dean). “I know you, Lucifer,” he added, wings and voice heavy with regret but not a trace of apology. “With all of that here, I knew you would come.”

Just for a moment, Dean thought he glimpsed something on the demon’s face that made it look like a person. Shock and betrayal, sure, those were to be expected; but there was something under them that might once have been loneliness.

And even if it was a monster now, and couldn’t feel those things, maybe it remembered being an angel enough to be shaken by it. Faith, Gabriel had said. Family, and belonging, and trust. Which, sure, Lucifer had screwed up royally, but if it was as deep in him as that...

If that was true, then yes, losing all that at his own brother’s hands had to have been enough to kill him, to turn him into a monster. The blade in the throat would have been just a belated courtesy.

It was gone in a moment, and Lucifer moved, too fast a blur for Dean to follow, launching himself at Cas. Dean was running, and Bobby raised his gun and fired, but Lucifer had smacked Castiel to the ground and was stamping down viciously on his face, on his throat.

Then Gabriel was barrelling down on top of the demon, a flurry of feathers and rage, and away they both went tumbling down the hill, locked together with teeth and hands and old fury.

Castiel was gasping and coughing and still trying to struggle his way upright in the mud. The bewildered demons scattered out of Dean’s way as he slip-slid over to fall on his knees beside him, fingers curling too tight through Castiel’s belt and the ripped shoulder of his shirt.

“Don’t move, you stupid fuck, you should be dead,” Dean informed him fiercely, and brushed the mud off Castiel’s face because he couldn’t get it out of his feathers. “When you’ve got backup, you let them in on the freaking plan.”

“Gabriel must not kill him, Dean,” Castiel rasped, eyes all tight and reproachful and too damn blue like he thought it was completely unreasonable for Dean to care that he was hurt. “He won’t come back from that.”

Which, what, he was talking nonsense. “You don’t want that fucker coming back from – wait, what, you mean Gabriel?” Dean scowled down at his stupid angel and his stupid hand which was pushing distractedly through Castiel’s stupid hair. “Dude, that’s not an angel. You get that, right? You’ve killed demons before. It’s just a monster now.”

“I know that,” Castiel growled, hoarse through his damaged throat, then he had to stop and close his eyes and breathe for a minute. “I look at it and I see the thing I’ve hunted for years. Gabriel still sees his cousin in it, and that is why he rails at it.” His eyes opened, and he was soaked with rain and doing that tired, earnest look Dean just couldn’t say no to, completely ignoring Sam and Bobby and Gwen where they were hovering over Dean’s shoulders. “You mustn’t let him do that to himself, Dean.”

“... Fine.” Dean stood up, glared down the slope to the tussle of copper feathers and red-smeared skin and muddy hair and grey flesh wrestling savagely below him. Then he glared back down at Cas, and stuck a finger in his face just in case. “You die and I’ll kill you.”

Castiel blinked at him, and opened his mouth like he wanted to argue the logic behind that; but Dean was already gone, three paces behind Sam, slip-running back down the stupid hill that was starting to look like a mudslide by now, and seriously, all this up-and-down business would have been a hell of a lot easier with wings for balancing on.

Gabriel was a creature of mud and blood, face streaked, hair matted, feathers clumped hopelessly together, and clothes unrecognisable. His sword was gone, glowing somewhere down by the foot of the hill, and Lucifer’s teeth were sinking into his throat. Gabriel drove his fist into Lucifer’s belly, ripping a snarl like a cough out of him that tore the demon’s mouth free of his neck. Lucifer’s hawk-taloned fingers raked across his back, down over his hip, leaving great tattered rents in clothes and flesh, so Gabriel spat mud in his face and drew back and punched his mouth, wings back-pedalling for balance, then slammed a foot hard into the shaggy goat’s knee of his leg.

Bone snapped, and Lucifer screeched like metal dragged over metal.

Dean didn’t even get halfway to them before Anna and Rachel crested the trees, flying awkwardly, holding something between them, slung on chains or ropes that shone with some kind of enchantment, some kind of containment. Whatever it was glowed, not the bright light of the angels but the sickly tempting glow of the marshes, and it writhed and squirmed without any real shape, like blood in the water. And Dean could feel it – it was held there, barely bound, and it was hungry.

He shouted his brother’s name, and a warning, and Sam slowed just long enough to look up before the fucking belated backup released whatever it was, and it hurtled toward the archangel and the demon like an apple toward the ground, with a cry like a whistle that Dean knew in his gut.

Will-o’-the-wisp. Not the phantoms it created to dance incessantly around its victims and tempt them in to their death, to feed on their loneliness and longing. Not the lights it lit in the distance to scare them or entice them and herd them the way it thought best. This was the creature itself, which no one had ever seen (never mind tackled), and it was confused and frightened, and it was heading straight and sure for the two juiciest damn titbits on its plate.

Gabriel heard it coming, he must have. Because instead of running as hard as he could and hoping it went for Lucifer instead, like the useless idiot should have done, he leaped at the thing that had been his cousin and pinned it to the ground. Held it there between his knees, struggling silently as it was, while the will-o’-the-wisp plunged right through him and into Lucifer.

It was very quiet, in the end. Sam’s furious “No, don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare” was louder than the groan Gabriel made as his body sagged to one side and rolled a listless little way down the hill. Louder than the muted thuds and damp noises of Lucifer writhing uselessly, wrapped in pallid light, as the thing settled in on it and feasted on despair.

Only, Dean had to be sure.

Sam skidded past the fallen demon without a second glance to hover uselessly over Gabriel, mouth working furiously and eyes big and brown and pleading and hair a sodden mess and hands still not daring to touch; but when Gabriel’s eyes opened, faded to the colour of pale wine, they skidded guiltily past Sam’s face and focussed where Dean stood over them, dripping.

“You do know Lucifer’s been dead for years, right?” Dean said, kind of roughly because his throat was aching.

Gabriel’s eyelids fluttered, like he was halfway to passed out, but his nose crinkled up and he hissed a half-hearted, “Screw you, I know.”

“Okay,” Dean said, and nodded kind of uselessly, wondering how to phrase this request; only he didn’t have to, because Gabriel did a tiny bit of an eyeroll, and clenched his fist against Sam’s knee, then his sword was there gleaming too weakly in his hand, and he was passing it up towards Dean.

There were probably meant to be some big significant words for something like that, but Dean was pretty damn exhausted, so he just took the hilt (which tingled like it was breathing under his hand) and nodded mutely to Gabriel. Then he turned, trudged the few yards back up the hill to the silently thrashing mess of will-o’-the-wisp and dying demon, and drove the sword through Lucifer’s throat and into the earth below.

The will-o’-the-wisp flashed bright for a moment, then dissipated into nothing. Lucifer’s back arched right off the ground, and one hand clawed at the air like it thought that might help; but then it subsided, and fell, and the demon’s body settled blank and grey against the grass, taking with it its weight of memories and whatever traces it had once had of an archangel’s soul.

Okay. That was that done.

Dean took a deep breath and looked up.

Rachel was leaning over Castiel, looking terrifying and icy with demon blood dripping from her sword and pretty much all the demons nearby lying about in the grass efficiently slashed up. Castiel was raising an arm towards her and she was dragging him to his feet, which Dean didn’t really approve of but he was tough and he seemed to be holding himself pretty steady, so he had to be okay. Gwen was taking on the last demon on that side of the field, and it was already beaten up enough that it wasn’t putting up much resistance to being exorcised, so she was okay. Bobby was picking his way cautiously on his shiny new legs down towards Dean, Ellen and Anna were still scuffling with a few stragglers over to Dean’s right, Jody had an arm around Barnes’ shaking shoulders, the pony had got herself and the cart kind of tangled up in the trees and had resigned herself grumpily to the situation, and Colt and Rufus looked more or less okay.

Which just left Gabriel.

Sam was crouching by the archangel, oblivious to the rain soaking his hair into his eyes and the sluggishly bleeding claw marks all over one arm, hands hovering frantically and pointlessly over one of Gabriel’s limp hands.

Gabriel wasn’t coming back from this.

If you’d ever seen it before, it was pretty well impossible to mistake that edge-of-death stillness: the barely visible breathing, the way he looked too flat where he lay. And for the first time Dean had seen in ages, the guy looked... not happy, exactly. Relaxed, anyway. Even kind of peaceful. And he was honest-to-god smiling at Sam. Pained and weak, sure, but nothing defensive, no sarcastic little deflections, no hiding.

Definitely dying, then.

The twat.

Sam’s eyes were shining, bright and full, and the smile he was wearing was that desperate stubborn grimace that Dean had seen on him too fucking often these last couple of years, the one that always broke Dean’s heart.

“You don’t get to do this, you hear me? You’re fine. Gabriel. Gabriel. We’re gonna fix you. We’re gonna get you there, you dick. Don’t you dare.”

Gabriel’s mouth did something too warm and tired to be a smirk. Then he lifted his hands and wrapped Sam’s up in them, pulled them down to rest on his stomach in a tangled little ball of fingers as Sam gaped, and closed his eyes.

Hell. Dean really didn’t want this to happen. If he’d just managed to close that trap earlier, run a bit faster, cottoned on to Castiel’s sneakiness quicker...

He shut that line of thought down savagely. Because every death, every time they lost someone, there was something you could regret, something you could gnaw away on in the night until it drove you mad if you let it. You couldn’t let that kind of thinking take hold.

Bobby had got there at some point and was watching, with a grim resignation that meant he’d figured out where this was headed, knew he couldn’t stop it but would be there to pick up the pieces if Sam needed to fall apart.

“Open your goddamn eyes,” Sam begged. “You have to take me places. You promised. You fucking owe me. You’re not allowed to die in debt, you raging brat, you haven’t even shown me hippos yet.”

“Don’t need me for that,” Gabriel murmured, mouth barely moving. “Gonna be awesome, Sam-bug. Bigwig angel-human ambassador or something. Something amazing. Do it all yourself.”

Sam’s face twisted up.

“Sammy,” Dean said roughly, uselessly.

Sam looked up to lock his eyes on Dean, pleading without words and looking just like a little kid again, scared and helpless and fucking stubborn. And it was terrifying, terrifying as it always was, the sheer goddamn weight of trust in the way Sam looked at him, like Dean could just fix this. And yes, sure, he liked the guy okay, but not well enough for this. Not faith and trust and belief. Not like Sam did, apparently.

“Dean,” Rachel said behind him, cool and measured, and he turned and scrubbed a hand savagely over his eyes and snarled, “What?”

Castiel was leaning heavily against her shoulder, staring past Dean at his dying brother with a look that Dean would have given anything to erase, and Rachel just stood there where she was and ordered, “Take him to Gabriel.”

Dean blinked. Castiel wasn’t leaking light or anything but he still stank of blood and looked pretty damn bad, and what? “What?”

Castiel’s fingers groped their way gingerly down Rachel’s arm to her elbow like some sickly spider, until he was taking his own weight. Then he held out his free arm toward Dean in a pretty clear summons. “She can’t go near him. Not like this.”

Right. Because Rachel thought Gabriel was a useless deadbeat. Yeah, Dean had got that memo.

In a moment Dean was sliding his arm nice and solid around Castiel’s waist, gathering the warmth of him in against his side, feeling the shuddery shallow breathing that came with cracked ribs and things like that, because apparently just because Lucifer hadn’t wanted the demons to kill him didn’t mean that they weren’t allowed to rough him up. He was heavy, wings and muscle and all, but Dean knew that and he could take it. This was something he could do.

It was a careful balancing act getting him back down to Sam and Gabriel, heels digging stubbornly into wet earth, not letting Castiel slip even enough to make his wings shoot out on reflex to catch himself, because the one time that almost happened the pained noise and the way Castiel sagged into his shoulder made Dean want to shoot his own stupid foot for letting them down. But they got there, and Dean lowered them both carefully down into the mud so they were facing Sam across Gabriel’s body, and Castiel got himself settled squarely on his knees while Sam stared at him beseechingly, then he reached out to touch Gabriel on the shoulder.

“Gabriel.”

Gabriel’s hands clenched in Sam’s, and his breathing faltered. “Don’t,” he whispered, and he sounded all small and wrong and weaker already, and why the hell had Castiel come closer if they were this bad? “Don’t say you told me so.”

“Gabriel,” Castiel growled, and shot Dean the pleading look of someone with no fucking clue what to do or say right when they needed it most.

“Hey.” Dean swallowed around that stupid lump sitting in his throat, and rubbed a pointless, gentle little circle with the hand still spread out in the small of Castiel’s back. “Hey. Not your fault you’re kind of useless at feelings, dude. Pretty sure Gabriel knows that. You weren’t much better as a kid, after all.”

It was the voice he’d always used when Sam had been having those nasty nightmares in his early teens, when he’d been too big to just climb into Dean’s bed to cuddle and needed to be able to be sort of teased out of it instead. Even now it made Sam ease up on the panic, huddling closer to Gabriel and to Dean; and apparently there was enough of the little brother left in Castiel to get him leaning into Dean’s shoulder, just a little, trembling, like he thought just maybe Dean might have some sort of save-the-world plan. Gabriel opened one eye a bit and gave Dean a shadow of a “come on, seriously?” look, which was definitely better than lying still and pale in Dean’s book, so Dean tipped him a bit of a wink and charged on recklessly, even if he had no idea what he was saying.

“You’re lucky my ego didn’t need any feeding, man. Honestly, three years and you never told me what a rakishly handsome devil I was?”

“I didn’t say anything to you,” Castiel pointed out, gruff and scratchy.

“Not a word,” Dean allowed breezily, “so it’s a good thing you’re so freaking easy to read. Like the way you look at Gabriel. Okay, fine so you piss each other off – you’re brothers, dude, you’re meant to get on each other’s last nerve, right Sammy? - but that doesn’t mean it’s broken, no matter what shit the rest of your angel buddies have got up to back at home. Seriously, you look at him sometimes like he’s shinier than the freaking sun, and you think he hasn’t noticed?” And obviously he hadn’t, because he was a blind idiot and never looked at the right moments and had this thing about Cas hating him or about not being good enough or whatever the hell it was. But Castiel was sort of blushing a bit and staring fierce and blue and unblinking at Gabriel like he could bring him back with just the power of determination, and Gabriel was looking back and forth between them like he was waiting for the punch line but his eyes were open and almost the right colour, and Sam was squeezing his fingers practically white, so whatever, Dean’s bullshitting wasn’t too far off the mark.

He bumped his shoulder carefully against Castiel’s. “Come on, man. When did you work out that your big brother was the most awesome thing ever?”

“Land’s End,” Castiel said immediately like an obedient little puppet, low and fervent. “I was four, and you showed me how to make a trumpet out of a sea shell. And you gave me almost all of the blue clams we’d baked, though they were your favourites because they’re sweeter than the white. Then you and Balthazar fought over the last five, until you told him that the blue ones were the girl clams and it wasn’t nice of him to want to eat girls.”

Gabriel made a small wounded noise, and turned his head on the grass, but his breathing was coming steadier and deeper. “Huh. I’d... forgotten that.”

“Can you,” Castiel growled, all fierce and awkward and determined. “Can you. Gabriel, I’m not strong enough to – but Sam’s faith is keeping you breathing,” (Sam looked terrified and squeezed Gabriel’s hands tighter), “you’re still. And Dean too, and. I’m here, Gabriel. We can.” His voice broke off. Then, “Please,” he said abruptly, and dragged Dean’s hand (rather to his surprise) over to rest with his on Gabriel’s and Sam’s. “Try.”

“Hey,” Dean said carefully, because he knew something about people killing themselves chasing lost causes. “You sure you’re okay, Cas? I mean, you don’t look like you’ve got much mojo to spare there.”

Sam made an impatient little noise, eyes bright with hope. “Don’t be stupider than you look, Dean, it’s love practically. Sharing doesn’t take it out of you or anything, it makes it stronger, honestly dude. Come on, Gabriel, give it a go. We’re all, you know. Here.”

“Least you got landed with the girly speech this time,” Gabriel grumbled faintly, sounding kind of put-upon, which had to be a good sign.

Bobby squelched his way up behind Dean, and Rachel must have filled him in on just what was going on here because he put his hand on Dean’s shoulder and said, “You’ve got me too, pedlar man.”

Which was a bit of a surprise. Though given what Bobby had said to Dean the day before, maybe it shouldn’t have been.

Sam coughed a watery sort of a laugh. “Hear that? No excuse to check out if Bobby’s hanging on to your coat tails.”

Gabriel made a bit of a face at him. “Fine. Holy pig’s bristles. Bunch of sentimental halfwits.”

Then he closed his eyes and – huh. Tugged, at something warm and fierce and protective deep in Dean’s gut. That part of him that made him think of Sam curled up all small and flushed in front of the fire in the evening, and the way Castiel’s mouth could go all soft around the edges even when he was pretending to scowl, and Bobby stomping into Dean’s kitchen to drink his whiskey when people were being stubborn little shits even though Dean knew perfectly well Bobby had enough whiskey of his own back in his house, and going back into a hot zone to get the last of their wounded out, and Sam strong and solid at his side, and Castiel being sarcastic and pressing solid and right against Dean’s side, and, huh. Maybe some of Gabriel too, just a bit, the douche.

The sky blurred for a minute, a long minute of slow, steady heartbeats and stubborn warmth and aching. Then the world came back in a rush and Dean’s hand slipped away and fell onto his own knee, slippery with rain and blood and sweat.

Sam was beaming like a freaking torch. Gabriel had taken his own hands back and was putting them to use wiping rain and mud off his face, which was pointless because they were filthy too, and Castiel seemed happy just to sit there looking down at him, all eyelashes and little rivulets of hair.

“Okay,” Gabriel declared loudly behind his sleeve. “Okay. I’m fine, alright? Can we never mention any of this little hysteria fest again?”

“Fair warning, dude, I’m going to hug you now,” Sam informed him happily, and Gabriel made a pitiful little sound of complaint and tugged him down long-sufferingly by the collar. Which was apparently permission enough for Sam to lean down and wrap both arms right under his back and bury his face in his neck, though Gabriel still looked kind of stunned when it happened and muttered something about giant girls, which Dean had been saying for years and it was about time somebody agreed with him.

Bobby gave Dean’s shoulder something between a smack and a pat and stepped back, like power-of-love resurrection orgies didn’t count unless you talked about them after, which Dean could totally get behind, especially because he could hear the sounds of other people squishing and sliding their way towards them.

So he glowered at Castiel instead, and poked him carefully in the thigh.

“You stupid, stubborn son of a bitch. Why the hell didn’t you tell us? We would have had your back.”

Castiel’s eyes went narrow and scary. “I’m stubborn, Dean Winchester? You should have left.”

“Yeah, like that was going to happen,” which would probably sound more badass if he’d been able to keep himself from smiling dopily at Castiel’s scowl. “I stick around. You should know that about me, man.”

Except apparently Castiel hadn’t, because his eyes went wide and sort of wondering for a moment, like he’d expected Dean to tear into him and throw him to the wolves for being a sly dogged son of a bitch who could play a long game against something like Lucifer and not lose himself (much) in the process. Which ached like hell, but not enough to make Dean relent when Castiel was being fucking reckless and needed to be called on it.

“This was between me and the Lucifer demon,” Castiel grated out stubbornly and dire with frustration after a moment. “None of you had any place in it, and I did not want you hurt.”

Dean glared right back, and adjusted his arm around Castiel’s waist because he was sort of starting to sag. “Oh, hell no, you don’t get to do that. No noble solo stupid martyr gigs. You got friends, you let them in on it, that’s how this works.”

“Ah,” Castiel said, dryly enough that he obviously felt like he was making a devastating rebuttal. “Dean Winchester disapproves of taking danger onto himself to spare his friends. I will remember it.”

Dean flashed him his most charming grin. “Damn straight. Also, hey.” He punched Castiel in the knee, then stuck his finger in his face. “That’s for using my friends as bait.”

“I was the bait, Dean,” Castiel sighed, all exasperated and sleepy-eyed. Bruises were creeping fast as evening shadows across his face, spectacular blossomings of colour that looked really bad but probably meant he was healing, at least. “After months of forming myself into his image to get his attention, I was the bait.”

Dean shot him the patented Winchester I call bullshit look, which apparently was enough to make even scary sneaky scheming angel generals look kind of shifty and guilty like a little brother caught trying to make the table prettier with crayons.

“You were... sweetening,” Castiel relented. “To make sure.”

Dean leaned in closer, and smiled against his cheek. “So that was the grand plan, huh?” he murmured. “Get him there with all the bait, keep his attention on the biggest bait until the trap closed, then shoo everyone else out, including your brother who’s the only one around who might be strong enough to take him one on one, then, what, stand in a field together while you get angel poison flung at you?” Castiel grumbled something and batted at Dean’s hand, but his body was slumping with exhaustion and it wasn’t that hard to keep a hold on him. “Was there another part to that plan, or are you just so awesome and badass you figured that’d do it?”

“You are insufferable,” his angel growled, and passed out, which Dean had totally seen coming and was not above using to get the last word in an argument.

“Takes one,” he informed the mess of dark hair on his shoulder smugly; and Gabriel made a rude noise.

“For the love of tiny green leprechauns in tutus. Go flirt somewhere else, would you? I’m trying to have a deathbed moment here.”

“Dude, you’re sitting up,” Dean pointed out helpfully. “You lose deathbed privileges as soon as you remember how to snark. Cas gonna be okay?”

Gabriel leaned forward, kind of shaky, and touched Castiel’s hand. (Sam was hovering anxiously in the background, but Gabriel was tactful enough or embarrassed enough to ignore him.) “It’s only physical. Should only take a couple of days, unless someone screws him over in the meantime. Don’t know anyone who might, do you, Lancelot?”

Dean ignored the jibe as background noise. “Fine. Then he needs a bed. And so do you. You gonna freak out if we take you home?”

Gabriel bristled, then scoffed. “Sure, because you guys are about as terrifying as a bowl of rotten sunflower seeds.”

So that settled that, then. Goading Gabriel into choosing pride over fear? Easiest thing Dean had done all day.