Nothing Left To Fear

28

Dean is blown wide open, desolate and dangerous, snapping at anyone that comes near, staring at the box for hours at a time. He paces, sits down, stands up and then paces again. He doesn't eat no matter how Cho nags and chides him.

He takes a mouthful of whiskey and throws it straight back up again. Castiel stands so close to him that they might as well be one body.

When Castiel reaches out and strokes the hair at the back of his neck, fingers twisting it between pads and nails: it's too long; it needs cut, but it's the only touch that Dean doesn't swat away angrily.

He's drinking some sort of sweet thing, pressed into his hands, but he is unaware of what it is.

Loki is suddenly there and Dean doesn't even react. "I've had like a hundred Fenrisulfrs," he says quietly, "but that first one, I thought I'd die, I wanted to. Wow, I slaughtered gods to make other people feel the way that I did. I know what that's like." He takes the cup from Dean, draining it, "it doesn't get any better you know, you just get stronger, better at dealing with it, you find ways to fill the void. I had lots of children, and they all died." He swirls the cup around in his hand as Castiel growls at him, taking the role of mama bear the way he does when Dean is vulnerable.

"Get the fuck out!" Castiel snarls. "Just get the fuck out!" There is a sort of sound like heavy wet fabric flapping and things around the room fly backwards like thrown by a great wind. It is not often that the angel beats his wings like that, and shows how very dangerous he finds this conversation.

"I didn't know." Dean says quietly, almost inaudibly. "How could I know?"

"Doesn't mean it doesn't suck," Loki agrees.

Castiel folds his wings around his master, wrapping him up like a blanket, but Dean doesn't soften at all, or even notice when the god vanishes again.

Jo comes in with a tray of obvious comfort foods, sweet sugary nothings and deep fried others. There is hot sweet tea in Dean's favourite kitten mug. It's ugly but apparently is just the right size and keeps the tea hot, she's left the spoon in it. "You're worrying us, Dean," she says as she puts the tray on the small table beside the bed in his cabin. "It's been two weeks and you haven't left this room."

Dean just turns his back to her, to the food she brings, to the offers she makes him. "It's not your fault," she said, "you couldn't have known, you hadn't seen her in over ten years."

"Azazel knew." Dean says. "The first time I went against him, he had Dad," Dean stops, "Sam was with me, and we were attacked by a demon, back then I couldn't tell, but I just knew, so I shot him - with the colt - clear through the head. He was Azazel's son." Dean looks at the floor, his eyes are windblown, "I didn't know he had one, but I would have shot him anyway, not for working for Azazel but for being his own creature, being a demon in his own right, so Azazel sends Meg, his daughter, and I know it was her, I'd recognise her stink anywhere, to find a child that could be mine, that I'll never know, because I sure as hell can't ask his mother, and did it because he MIGHT have been mine. So how, Jo, is that not my fault?"

He shakes his head, "I couldn't have known, I couldn't have protected him, but that doesn't mean it wasn't my fault." Jo is dressed in usual hunter chic, plaid and denim, her boots are a dull tan but heavy enough for all terrain. She has taken to making her own socks, mostly for something to do on the long winter nights whilst those who remain argue over monster names and she only needs to know how best to kill them.

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to find the son of a bitch," he answers, "and when I do, I'll make him suffer for everything. It's gone long past justice, Jo, straight into revenge and back out the other side. It's too fucking late for anything else."

She wraps her hand about his head, pulls his forehead down against hers, "I know," she says, "so we're going to take out as many of the sons of bitches as we can, and then we're going to kick down the gates of Hell." Her hand is on the back of his neck as Castiel opens his wings enough to allow her in. "I'm thinking we hold a frat party, advertise it on facebook, nothing does damage like a fuck-load of drunken teens."

He doesn't laugh, which is what he's supposed to do, but instead lets out a shuddering sob, his tears falling down unto her lips but she does not lick them away. It's the first time in a long time Dean has cried. She merely eases him down to the bed, wrapped around him, Castiel about them both, and softly hums under her breath as she rocks him, head against her breast and the angel keeping the world away, allowing her to give his master the comfort that he could not. "By the rivers of babylon," she sings because the song has haunted her all day, "where we laid down, yeah, we wept, and we remembered Zion."