SPN Fic: The boy's still running (Gen, PG-13, 4x10 coda)
Title: The boy's still running
Author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG-13 (for language), post 4x10
W/C: 2,700
Disclaimer: None of them belong to me.

a/n: Title from Oysterband. Fic grew out of some wacky speculation I had about Castiel here. Thank you to meko00 for her comma-wrangling and beta skills.

Summary: There are a few things Sam still doesn't know about his brother's time in hell.



Sam waited for a long time while cars rushed by, the breeze ruffling the grass. He waited, his shoulder inches from Dean's back, the hood of the Impala growing cool beneath him. He waited while Dean stayed turned away from him, watched as Dean swiped at his eyes with his fingers. He waited until he could tell by the way the line of Dean's jaw relaxed, how his breathing quieted, that he was done with crying.

The sun shifted, stretching their shadows away from the car. The air smelled of dry leaves, clean except for a hint of exhaust and the gasoline-rubber-metal scent of the Impala.

Sniffing hard once, Dean chucked his empty beer bottle off into the bushes. He kept his head down as he walked past Sam, opened the driver's side door and slid his body onto the bench. The engine rumbled into life before Sam even had the other door open, informing him this conversation was over, finished, done. Sam had learned to hear moods in the way Dean ran the car—he had no idea if Dean did it on purpose, or if Sam was assigning meanings where there were none. There were happy engine starts and angry engine starts and engine starts that said, I'd better get a bacon cheeseburger right now or my stomach's going to cave into my spine.

Sam slid into his spot next to Dean and put his empty beer bottle in the foot-well to throw out later. He glanced at his brother as Dean pulled the Impala off the shoulder onto the highway. Dean's gaze was focused straight ahead through the windshield.

He didn't reach for the cassette player. They drove the rest of the day in close to full silence, broken only by questions about whether they should turn off for food, bathroom breaks, and one argument, half-hearted and lacking sharpness, about which route would have the least traffic.

*

A week later, and Dean still hadn't touched the cassette player. Sam didn't dare point it out, or say, we should talk.

Also, there were the nightmares. Not just Dean muttering in his sleep, twitching in distress, the way he had before his confession, but Dean scrambling out of bed, screaming. When it happened, Sam switched on the light, grabbed Dean, told him where he was, who he was. Held onto him until Dean stopped shaking, recognized Sam and the motel room, pushed Sam away and made a smart remark.

Dean slept quietly after. But he wouldn't talk about it, and it happened again the next night, and the next.

They worked the latest job, an actual bridge troll that had been murdering travelers.

"So, what do you think, Sam? You want to trick it into cutting its own stomach open?" Dean scraped the axe blade against the whetstone. "Or should we just behead the sucker?"

They found the cave twelve yards or so back into the scrub at the base of the bridge. Sam held the machete in its sheath with one hand, aimed his flashlight with the other. The beam picked out the jagged rock walls, while Dean hefted the battleaxe. The cave smelled of foul mud, old rot, and wet rock, the air too thick, almost cloying.

The crunching sound beneath their feet alerted Sam to what they'd found even before he aimed the flashlight downward. The beam found bones, scattered on the cave floor. They were human. Some had shreds of clothing still on them, clumps of dried out flesh.

Dean lowered the axe to the floor, and crouched, his head down. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. Sam heard him breathing too fast.

"Dean?" It was the first time in days Sam had approached him with anything like a question about how Dean was doing.

He waited for Dean to say ew, gross or make a joke about the other white meat.

But Dean said nothing. After a moment he got to his feet and walked farther away from Sam into the darkness. Sam hurried to keep up with him, aiming his flashlight beam at Dean's back as if he could keep hold of him that way.

*

They wasted the troll, then went to a diner for burgers and fries. The place had chrome trim along the counters and tables, checkerboard wallpaper, and the fins of a red '57 Chevy sticking out of the back wall.

Dean stole fries off Sam's plate, shrugged and said, "yeah, whatever," when Sam complained about it.

*

Sam fell asleep early, napping while Dean watched the football game on TV. He'd been doing that, sleeping when he knew Dean would be awake, so Sam could be ready for Dean's nightmares.

He woke with his head muddled, the roar of the game going into the fourth quarter in his ears. The clock in the shape of a moose head on the nightstand between their beds read eleven fifteen.

Rubbing both hands over his face hard, Sam sat up, his neck and shoulders aching. While Dean watched the game without shouting advice at the coach or the players, Sam stood, feeling dull with lack of sleep, shoved his feet into his shoes, and grabbed his jacket.

"Where are you going?" Dean asked, glance going to Sam, then back to the game. He didn't sound annoyed, he sounded lost. As if he was afraid Sam wasn't coming back.

Sam stood with the door half-open to the cold night. "Just over to the 7-11. For coffee. You want some?"

"Nah," said Dean, folding his arms as if he'd never shown a moment of uncertainty in his life. He sat against the bed's headboard with his legs stretched out, ankles crossed.

"I won't be long," Sam said.

He lingered a moment longer, then shut the door.

The sky was dotted with stars, burning bright in the sharp autumn air. Sam fisted his hands, huffed on his fingers to warm them before he shoved his hands into his pockets.

He crossed the half-empty parking lot. The neon glow of the 7-11 was ahead of him, with the hulking shape of one of the low mountains as a backdrop. He wondered wow much longer Dean could go without a peaceful night of sleep, how much longer before he broke completely under his memories.

Sam stood still while traffic blew past him. He looked up, finding the constellation of Orion. He always found the hunter first, his anchor point in the sky.

He wished he believed that all that was out there were gases and rock, fire and atoms and drifting satellites. Heaven and Hell and God, what use were they when his brother screamed every night.

"Hello, Sam."

Sam cursed, spun, and had his knife out before he recognized Castiel standing a few feet away under the glow of a sodium lamp. His hands were in the pockets of his trenchcoat, which looked like it had been cleaned recently, a lot of the stains gone.

"What do you want?" Sam lowered his knife, but kept it out, drew himself up to his full height.

Castiel looked off towards the 7-11, where a broad-shouldered man and two kids were walking out the door, the kids drinking Slurpees even though it was so cold out. The little girl had a bright red wool hat, the boy had a Harry Potter scarf.

His gaze snapped back to Sam. "I wondered about your brother."

"Really," Sam said, feeling his lips curl in a bitter mockery of a smile.

"Yes, Sam. He told you, didn’t he? About his time in hell?"

"Well, if you know that, then you probably know everything else, and you don't need to ask after him." You prick, Sam added silently.

Castiel walked over to a log bench that sat beneath a thin tree. He sat down and bowed his head, knotting his hands together.

"Perhaps not," Castiel said.

"Okay, are we done here?" Sam slipped the knife back into its place, nestled in its sheath at his hip. "Because you're not a whole lot of help, did anyone ever tell you that? Oh, that's right, me and my brother did." He started striding past Castiel.

"Did he tell you about leaving hell?" Castiel said.

Sam stopped. Every muscle in him wanted to keep walking; his spine itched with the need to be away. "No, he didn't."

Castiel unknotted his fingers, sat back against the bench. "There are things you need to know about Dean," he said.

"What the fuck do you care?" Even if Castiel did know something, he could have told them sooner. He stepped up to Castiel, put his hands on the round, rough slats of the bench on either side of the angel's shoulders, leaned in, the clouds of his breath in Castiel's face. Castiel didn't move, didn't flinch. His blue-eyed stare was unnerving. "What do you care if he wakes up screaming every single night? Where were you when the hell hounds tore him apart and he went to hell in the first place? You left him there for forty years."

"I'm sorry," Castiel said.

Sam shoved off the bench and stumbled back. "You have what you want, he's here, available for whatever you need to use him for. You know what? He'll do it. Whatever…mission…you want to send him on, he'll do it, if it'll help people, if it'll save the world. He'll fight for that, and he'll do it until he's at his last strength and bleeding out." Sam kicked a metal can, sending it skipping across the asphalt. "And what then, huh? You keep threatening to throw him back down there--"

"I won't," Castiel said, his voice going sharp, the infuriating calm shaken. His brow furrowed. "There was a time I thought I could, but I won't."

"So you were bluffing." Sam let out a bitter laugh. It wasn't enough that the threat was gone—that they'd made it at all made him want to punch Castiel across the jaw. "Wow, you guys really are full of hot air."

"I have my orders. Among them to make sure Dean follows the right path. Threatening him was the wrong way to do that."

"Oh, you think?" Sam wondered if he was going a little nuts, yelling at an angel in the middle of a parking lot outside a 7-11. Maybe he was having a dream, or a vision.

"You don't understand," said Castiel. "Even if it were effective, I would no longer be willing to do it."

A truck roared past them, kicking up debris, the backdraft rustling the leaves of the tree over Castiel's head and intensifying the cold.

"When I went into hell to get your brother, I went alone," Castiel said, as quiet descended again. "The war wasn't quite at the breaking point, and we weren't ready to start open warfare in hell itself, so it was a covert mission. An extraction. I had never seen hell before." Castiel swallowed, his shoulders hunching. "So many souls, all crying out to me to save them, but I had come there only for Dean Winchester."

Sam sat on the bench next to Castiel, clenched his fingers around the slats. The anger seemed to have flown out of him, leaving him feeling drained. There was a note in the angel's voice that caught at him. It made him think of the hunters he and Dean had known growing up, the ones who told them stories. The ones who'd been on the front lines.

"Alastair challenged me, claimed Dean as his own. I fought him and his minions, beat them back long enough that I could grab hold of your brother's soul, and—" Castiel's mouth curved into a lopsided, sad smile. "He resisted."

"What? I don't understand," Sam said, although he did, and wished he didn't.

"He told me to leave him there."

Sam's stomach clenched, before a shiver jolted through him.

"He tried to fight me off. He said there were others, that I had to save them. He struggled. I didn't mean to grip his soul so tightly that I burned him." Castiel rubbed his hands over his knees. "It's a soul-mark. When I healed your brother, the scar could not be removed."

"I—" Sam clenched and unclenched his jaw, shoved his hand through his hair. He felt cold to the bone, wanted hot coffee, indoors, the flickering light of the TV, the sight of Dean alive. "I have to go," he said, and stood up.

Castiel stood up too. "Let me help," he said.

"Why did you wait four months?" Sam had to know, the bitterness of that caught in the back of his throat, stronger still than the sudden flicker of gratitude he felt, knowing what the angel did.

"That is when the order came."

"No, I meant, why didn't anyone help Dean before…why didn't…never mind." The answer to that was self-evident. Heaven ran on expediency, and would have no reason whatsoever to care about one individual. Dean became important because he became useful. "I need coffee," Sam said, and walked away.

*

When he pushed through the glass doors of the 7-11 a few minutes later with coffee and snacks, Castiel was waiting for him.

*

The late news had replaced the game, which was apparently over. Dean was asleep, propped sitting up against the headboard, fully clothed with the glow of the TV sending colored shadows over his face.

Sam put the bags down on the table and removed the coffee cups. He'd gotten two, but Dean was sacked out, peaceful for the moment, and Castiel was standing in the open doorway like he didn't know where to place himself, whether he should go farther in, or go out.

"Close the door," Sam whispered, switching off the TV. He grabbed the extra blanket and put it over his brother.

Castiel did, and Sam held out the second cup of coffee to him. The angel frowned, head tilting to one side as he stared at Sam curiously. Then he took it.

Sitting down at the table, Sam opened up his laptop, checked his email and the paranormal boards, and took sips of the hot coffee. It warmed his chest and stomach, but did nothing to ease away how he felt when he thought of Dean struggling against Castiel, refusing to be saved.

The angel stood near the door, sipping the coffee slowly, as if he were savoring it. He kept his eyes on Dean.

"You can sit down," Sam said softly.

The angel sat.

Minutes, then hours, turned over while they finished their coffee and Sam worked on the computer and Castiel…thought about whatever it was angels thought about when they were just sitting around.

Around three a.m., Sam woke with his head down on his folded arms on the table. He jerked fully awake, blinked his vision clear. Dean was muttering in his sleep. Castiel had tensed in his chair.

"Don't you go near him," Sam said.

He went over to the bed and sat down as his brother grew more restless.

"I need you here," Sam said, his voice low. This was only for Dean; Castiel didn't need to hear it. "I don't give a shit whether you think you deserved to leave that place or not. You're here and this is where you're supposed to be. So suck it up and stop freaking out." He put out his hand, rested it on Dean's forehead. "Jerk," Sam whispered.

Dean quieted. Sam straightened the blanket and returned to the table.

They sat for a while longer. Castiel busied himself with examining the contents of his pockets, seemed puzzled by the pennies and stamps he found.

"Thank you," Sam said. "For fighting for him."

Castiel's head jerked up from the coin he was turning over in his fingers. He nodded.

Sam closed his eyes, resting them for a few seconds. He heard a rustle of wind. When he opened his eyes, the angel was gone.

He sat up watching until the pale dawn light shone through the curtains. Dean wasn't restless.

Lying down on his bed, Sam finally let himself sleep.

~end