aerilex

Title: The Stillness, Chapter 8- The Fall
Author: Aerilex
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Friendship/Pre-slash
Rating: PG
Characters: Dean, Sam, mentions of Bal and Bobby, Castiel, Eve
Word Count: ~2450
Disclaimer: Yeah, nothing at all is any different from before. I still don’t own the boys. Wish to hell I did sometimes, though. They’d be in much safer hands and, y’know, wouldn’t have to worry about losing everything/everyone they love all the damn time.
Warnings: AU from 6x15, but expect to see mentions from the rest of the season
Summary: Dean and Sam find something. The Mother initiates the next phase of her plan.
A/N: So, my Latin is a little rusty. Not gonna lie, even after taking eight courses between high school and college that crap just flies out of your brain when you move onto a different language. So please forgive the roughness to the Latin here. I intend to come back and correct it once I check with my old Latin tutor.

Chapter Seven

Dean feels like they’ve been at this for days. Oh, wait. That’s probably because they have. Between him, Sam, and Bobby, they’ve managed to cover almost all the materials Bobby’s collected and preserved like an obsessive-compulsive, paranoid freakshow hoarder for the last several decades. Seriously, Dean thinks that if half this crap wasn’t as useful as it’s proven to be, he and Sam would have had to check Bobby into some sort of rehab center ages ago for this shit. It’s nigh ridiculous how many ancient tomes and musky scrolls the man has kept.

It’s been almost three days since Balthazar popped in with the news about Castiel, and Dean is growing weary in his frantic search for any information they can use to find the Mother, because Balthazar had implied that to find that would help them find Cas. Well, Dean thinks Balthazar implied that. He’s choosing to believe it, anyway, because if Balthazar actually sent him on a needle-in-a-haystack hunt to distract him while Balthazar sought the missing angel—well…Dean may have to kill him. And he’ll make it slow and painful, an art he’s had forty years to perfect.

He should be out there looking for Cas himself, even if Balthazar basically had said there was nowhere Dean could go that Balthazar hadn’t already been. He knows that he’s just feeling useless and even worse, helpless, but that’s how Dean operates. He can come up with a decent plan on the fly, but really he’s always been the shoot first, ask questions later sort of guy and when it comes to someone he cares about going missing? He’s pretty much the seek victim, kill perpetrator sort of guy. Dean really, really wants a shot at whoever has Castiel. He worries constantly that it’s Raphael, but he doesn’t think that Raphael would put Castiel somewhere that Balthazar wouldn’t be able to sense him. Raphael seems more of the nature to destroy and obliterate something that stands in his way immediately.

Dean doesn’t even let it cross his mind that that may be the reason Balthazar can’t sense Castiel, that he could possibly be nothing but a smoky shadow of wings pressed into the floors of Heaven.

Pointedly keeping that out of his mind has only increased the weight pressing it down into exhaustion. Dean holds a book in his lap, and reads the same passage for the tenth time in a row before realizing the words are blurring together and he doesn’t understand it at all. Heaving a sigh, he tosses the book onto the coffee table and collapses back against the cushions of the couch before pinching the bridge of his nose. "Sam, I don’t know what the hell I’m looking at."

Sam looks up, and Dean doesn’t even need to glance at him to know he’s wearing his puzzled-sad-puppy face, all pinched brow and downturned mouth. "Lemme see," Sam says, and Dean finally does lower his hand from his face to gesture toward the book he was investigating as Sam drags his chair over and swoops up the tome. Sam reads over it once, then again, and soon the little crinkle between his brow spreads to tighten his entire expression in dissatisfaction. Dean frowns as well, because he knows that look.

"Aw, man. What is it?"

"I think…I think this is what we might have been looking for. Maybe." Sam turns and carries the book back to the desk where he’d been working, holds it in one hand as he shuffles through the faded, crinkled documents he’d been reading through. "Dean. Here." Sam gets this face like he might be getting lucky, and Dean knows what that means too. With a slight groan, he pushes to his feet and joins his brother. Sam is practically vibrating now, leaning over one of the sheets upon which a list of sigils is drawn. He lays the book down with it, pointing to a sigil inscribed on the page that Dean had been reading. "This. This here. It reads Arisen. Didn’t you say Balthazar had mentioned that?"

"Yeah, Sammy. Doesn’t mean it has anything to do with Cas and where he’s gone." And try as he might, Dean can’t keep that little squirmy thing in his gut from rearing its ugly head at the mention of his missing angel. He chews the corner of his mouth as he tries to refocus his attention on whatever Sam’s going on about. Yeah, Balthazar had said to keep looking for ways to kill the Mother, but no, Dean isn’t feeling too motivated to do anything other than start tearing any ugly, evil thing he can find apart until one of them reveals the angel.

Sam’s giving him a look. Bitchface #18, the one where Sam doesn’t like whatever he thinks Dean’s thinking about. Wears it a lot, actually, now that Dean’s thinking about it. "Dean," Sam starts, his tone caught somewhere between patient and irritated.

"Yeah, I know." And Dean does. He knows that it’s just as important to find information on the Mother, Balthazar had kind of mentioned that so he’s willing to do it, but… "Okay, so tell me more." He gestures toward the sigils, wishes Bobby hadn’t had to go out for supplies 'cause Bobby and Sam together? Perfect research team.

Sam starts going through the passage, dissecting the Latin with his ginormous cranium faster than Dean could even read the damned thing. "Okay, so this is talking about the Arisen and how it’s created. Mmm…" Sam squints at the script, translating then checking again to confirm the translation. He crinkles his brow, not quite confused but more like puzzling out the mystery of the Latin. "There is a lot about the importance of three repetitions, to create and to destroy. Kind of vague besides that. Oh—" He turns the book and points to a line from the passage. Dean stares at it, then at his brother, slowing raising a brow in silent query. "This last line. Did you even read this Dean?" Sam looks up at him, and Dean’s blank stare is all the response Sam needs before he’s rolling his eyes and shoves the book under Dean’s nose. Dean startles, grabs the book, and glares at Sam for a moment before following his brother’s pointed gesture and turning his eyes down to the last line on the page.

"Innatus immundis arma fiet. Et cinis matrem pergent."

It takes Dean a moment, his mouth tracing the words as he reads them and works through the translation in his head. "The impure arisen will be the weapon. And the ashes shall purify the Mother?"

"Close enough," Sam says fondly, then raises both brows as he waits for it to click.

Dean does a half-second later. "This is talking about the freaking Phoenix, isn’t it? This is our way to finding a weapon to kill the Mother of All."

Sam smirks at him. It’s a dim thing, hesitant but hopeful. "If we can figure out what this means, we may be able to make the phoenix ashes. We may have gotten it wrong with thinking we needed to kill one." He starts flipping to the next page, scribbling down notes on the tattered notebook he’s been using. He glances surreptitiously up at Dean. "Hey, we might need Balthazar’s help if I can figure this out. You wanna call him?"

Dean shoot Sam a look, catches his eye and smiles in silent thanks. Sam knows he’s anxious to hear if there’s any news about Cas. Dean’s been anxious to hear anything from the angel since Balthazar took him, wounded and bleeding, back to Heaven to recuperate. Leaving Sam to continue translating and rubbing at his heavy eyes, Dean goes to make the call. He hopes that Balthazar has good news for him, hopes that he’s found a lead to Cas. He keeps the quiet squirmy rodent in his chest quiet, forces it to submission and wills it dead. Because there’s no way Cas is anything less than alive and smiting. That’s the only thing Dean has faith in right now.

~ ~ ~

Castiel has divided his thoughts into two sections. One is trained on a pair of viridian eyes twinkling with devilish mirth, and a voice that urges him to just hang on, Cas. Hang on for me. The other lazily analyzes every motion that the knife sinking into his vessel’s flesh makes, cataloguing each sigil carved into him with an impassive gaze. The Mother has finished with his wings by now. She has left him stapled, broken, and bleeding against the wall of her special room, and he feels fire lance through each hollow bone as inky plumes begin to fall away and gather in dusty piles upon the floor. The pain digs deeper each passing moment but when he trains his thoughts on discovering what the sigils mean and what magick they are meant for, he can manage.

Eve is deceptively surgical as she tugs his tie loose, spreads open the white shirt and bends to her task. Castiel can see the gleam in her eyes, however—something wild and almost demonic, though he knows that she is not like any creature he has known. Eve had been correct when she had stated that she is more powerful than Castiel. He has tried several times to discreetly cast out with his Grace and it has recoiled each time, quivering and curling like a wounded animal. He cannot call his brothers for help, and he cannot escape on his own. Not without some sort of plan.

So he makes due with attempting to discover what Eve is about. Balthazar often teases him for his inquisitive mind, but Castiel finds that it is quite useful to be curious and knowledgeable—especially in times like this. He recognizes several of the symbols that Eve is carving into his skin, and recalls that they are of black magick born of ancient studies, the same that had led human science to the failed explorations of alchemy. He knows that the symbols are meant to aid in metamorphosis, but he does not know what Eve thinks he is going to transform into. She keeps murmuring to herself while she works, sentiments like such a pretty thing you are, not nearly what you will be and those feathers will be so lovely lined with fire and coated in ash.

Perhaps Eve means to burn Castiel’s Grace out. That would certainly explain the low-simmering waves of magma that have coiled around his essence. He feels feverish and his entire being aches distantly. Eve pinches her tongue in the corner of her lips, a gesture that is so oddly childlike that Castiel wonders if it is a memory of the flesh that the Mother has inhabited. The poor girl is burned so far from her existence that Castiel cannot even trace her name in the remnants of her body.

He flinches back against the cold stone he hangs upon as Eve leans forward to lap at a freshly-cut symbol. "Just as sweet as honey," she remarks happily, her eyes flicking up to meet his. "That should finish that, angel." She smiles at him, and leans up to press a kiss to his cheek. "You’ve been such a good child. It breaks my heart to have to do this to you."

Castiel cannot help but scoff. "You have no heart." Atta boy, Dean’s voice lauds him in the back of his mind. Castiel fights back a smile. Even in his thoughts, Dean appreciates abrasiveness in the face of evil; it would appear that Castiel is inheriting a bit of that foolishness as well.

Eve’s smile sours and turns ugly, reflects her true self for a short moment. The silver blade that she had used to carve the five circles into his abdomen suddenly pierces through his shoulder and the sensitive joint of his wing. He bites down on the cry that trembles on his tongue, bites into his lip until he tastes the tangy copper of blood. "You should mind your manners, little one," Eve admonishes him quietly, then turns away to leave him wallowing in his misery.

Castiel releases the grip he has on his lower lip, and takes in deep gasps of air as his wing joint screams at him to remove the knife impaling it. He tries to still himself but the pain keeps smoldering, and something in his stomach churns even as his Grace starts to weep from effort and exhaustion. None of it keeps him from sensing the shift in the air when he and Eve receive visitors, though.

Castiel forces his eyes open, unaware that he had closed them, and waits for his blacked-out vision to clear before he glances up. There are perhaps a dozen creatures standing in the room now, moving to form a semicircle around the wounded angel in the guises of mortal humans. Castiel can see through each facade, and marks that the creatures are all Alphas, the most powerful of the Mother’s children.

The angel begins to worry.

"My children," Eve says, her eyes trained on Castiel. "We have work to do. Be prepared to welcome your new brother." She turns to glance at the creatures over her shoulder. There seems to be a collective assent, all their eyes bright and fixed upon Eve. Unlike her children, Castiel tenses at Eve’s words. She smiles when she sees him stiffen. "I told you, angel. You will be my greatest weapon. Are you ready for this?"

Castiel opens his mouth to interject, but Eve reaches up and wraps her slender fingers around the blade she had buried through his shoulder. In one swift, breath-stealing motion, she pulls the blade free of his shoulder and buries it into his heart. Castiel’s eyes go wide as the blade pierces not only the human heart that beats within his vessel’s chest, but also the ailing Grace that is hiding within him. The pain explodes, and light spills from every wound and around the edges of every one of the torturous blades stuck through his human form and his angelic one.

Dean’s voice rises in his mind, calls comfort to him, then stutters out as merciful darkness finally, finally reaches for him and tugs him into its restful embrace.

Chapter Nine