Nothing Left To Fear

1

The camp is quiet in the very early morning, most of the Hunters sleeping till long past noon after the inevitable late nights but the light has a certain serenity and buttery quality that gives Dean a facsimile of comfort. His angel is sat beside him, even when everything else has gone to shit. On the clear days he sits on the roof of his little cabin, the angel perched beside him and the leash hanging between them, invisible, unused but still between them like a heavy red cord.

Only Dean calls him Cas, only Dean is allowed to. Whatever he is; whatever he was, Cas is Dean's now, guard dog, partner, slave.

The angel is bare chested in the light, he's wearing old cotton pants - he doesn't sleep but Dean likes to maintain the fiction and makes him dress for it, and crawl into the bed with him, warm and solid and there- and the light finds the old gold twist at the hollow of his neck. Cas looks at him, sonic blue eyes slitted and cruel, then he smiles, never showing his teeth, stretching out his bare feet on the tiles. His nose twitches once, twice, "I can smell gunfire," he says, "and blood" his nose twitches again, pulling in the air, "it's not human," he cocks his ear to listen, "I think Christian and the others bagged a deer to go with the rabbits."

Castiel is not human, does not pretend to be, loping at his master's heel like a vengeful guard dog, and like that dog he is devoted, determined and collared.

"What else can you hear, Cas?" Dean asks, his voice low not to break the buttery light and quiet.

"Campbell snores like an engine," Cas replies, "Ellen has made porridge," his nose flickers, "she has added cinnamon to the honey in it, the way that you prefer it. There is bacon too. She worries that you are not eating enough. A couple are making love in cabin four, before the day, just lazy touches with no real end, but whispers, grunts and laughter. One of the children is talking in her sleep." He tilts his head, another of his inhuman gestures as he processes the sound. "Denton has struck her again." He says, "I can hear her crying."

Dean grits his teeth and for one more time considers sending Castiel and ending it, of taking a mediocre Hunter from the pack, snapping his neck and dumping his salted burned corpse in the woods where it doesn't matter if he'll be found, a warning to all who come later of what is and what is not acceptable, but then the moment is passed, the light changes to the hard light of early summer, and he decides it's no business of his.

He climbs back into the cabin through the skylight, dresses quickly and perfunctorily, old jeans and a worn tee, and a thread bare sweater against the light morning chill, he threads his feet into his boots and then reminds Cas to dress. The angel forgets such human conceits. He walks barefoot through snow unless chided. He wears old scuffed tennis shoes and jeans; a cambric shirt that brings out the color of his eyes and hangs open at his neck to show his torque. It is the oldest of the Limiters, the strongest, and he wears it like it were nothing, as if it was only jewelery.

Dean leads him to the mess cabin; Castiel doesn't eat- he doesn't even pretend to: he just drinks in the smells of the place; bacon and coffee and cinnamon porridge- the smells of the Hunters- of Ellen's hair when she leans towards him: gun oil; cordite; blood; coconut shampoo and the salt water she uses to scrub the boards. Sometimes he licks his lips, savoring the taste of humanity and Dean wonders if he is one moment away from slaughtering them all just for the taste of the blood lingering against his tongue.

Sometimes Castiel forgets, and leans in to lick the dried soap off a stranger's neck, or to smear lipstick from Jo's mouth with his thumb to better smell the beeswax before scraping it off with his teeth. Jo is used to these peculiarities- the others warn him to call off his dog. Dean just laughs, it's a dark dirty sound, before he tugs the invisible leash between him and his angel, and Castiel, poisoned with his master's humanity, only laughs too.

Dean's not much of a leader, but he's the one that they've got.