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blue_bells» Title: The Littlest Hunter (5/7)
» Fandom: Supernatural
» Warnings: De-ageing!
» Pairing(s)/Characters: wee!Castiel, Winchesters
» Summary: As punishment for disobeying, Castiel is sent back in time in the form of a young child - only to be unofficially adopted by John Winchester.
» A/N: This part is dedicated to the cheerleaders and the great enablers who forgive my delayed updates and keep me charged; you know who you are. Thank you! <3
PREVIOUS: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
John finishes the tail of a thought in his notes against Castiel’s sigil and throws the pen down on the writing pad of his journal.
Some of the symbols are familiar, concerned with seeking a form of energy and one of the scrawls looks close to an invocation. But John’s searching for the meaning when combined with those foreign characters. Castiel’s sigil demonstrates a completely different grammatical form of magic that has him stumped.
Because, unless his judgment is off, the little he does understand don’t suggest the outcome of killing a demon.
John thinks of that piercing light, the shadow of the demons as they fled those bodies convulsing in the hay.
Or had it only been shadows?
John tosses the journal and reference tome into his duffel bag under the desk. It huffs back a pungent cocktail of herbs lined to discourage Sam’s curiousity.
He’s not getting anywhere. He sighs and looks over his shoulder to where Castiel is standing with Dean by the window.
Castiel’s face is dazed, like he’s focused on something faraway other than the towel Dean’s roughly drying his hair with. Dark, wet hair hangs in his eyes and he squeezes them shut when Dean rubs the towel over his face, pushing his fringe back.
John thinks Castiel’s been put through more showers in the last twelve hours than he’s seen in the past week. The kid has come out two shades paler every time.
Dean squashes Castiel’s face into the towel and sniggers under his breath when Castiel scowls unhappily.
“Dean,” He whines and leans away from the offending towel hand.
He gets the towel rubbed in his face again for his complaint. John considers his eldest and the twisted smile on his face. Dean’s attention is only divided when he glances to check Sam’s still occupied with the book on his bed.
He does well.
John leans back in his chair and catches Castiel’s eye, beckoning him to the desk.
“Castiel.”
Dean grunts in annoyance when Castiel bolts. He throws the towel over the kid’s head as he flees and there’s a lean in Castiel’s side, a limp that shows he’s favouring his left when he rounds the bed to John’s knee.
Dean had been right. John feels Dean had more to tell him than just the kid's bung shoulder, but then Castiel had re-emerged, dripping from his shower, and it obviously wasn't something he wanted to discuss with either Castiel or Sam in earshot.
“Hands out, palms up,” John says.
Castiel’s offers his hands. Leaning forward in his chair, John pats them dry with the towel still hanging off his head and peers closely.
He uncurls Castiel’s fingers from the gash on his palm and scrutinises where the kid had cut himself to paint the sigil. He’d used the same hand to trigger the spell and John knows Dean spent a good session of the previous night seeking out splinters with a pair of tweezers.
He turns Castiel’s hand over and runs a thumb over the tiny cut he’d made to test the boy against silver.
It’s almost twelve hours later and both wounds are still threatening to weep.
John frowns and looks into the boy’s face. Castiel’s wide blue eyes are watching him expectantly and John has to look back to his hands. What was it about kids and their ability to stare right into a man, past his words to a truth he hadn’t discovered yet himself?
Sam was the same. John couldn’t know all the answers. Most times he let Dean fill the quiet.
Castiel could be sick. He could be suffering one of those syndromes that made it difficult for his blood to clot. John redresses the wound. Castiel’s face pinches with a disgruntled whine as the bandages wrap tightly.
“I want to look at your shoulder.”
Castiel glances at his left arm warily, like his injury is something he expected to hide better, but he doesn’t protest when John lifts it experimentally.
He finds the point when Castiel winces, startled. He’s frowning in surprise at his own arm where it’s stopped just shy of straight at the shoulder and John waits for the discomfort to fade before he tries again. His other hand braces Castiel’s elbow.
This time Castiel actually cries out, small body folding around the arm in John’s grasp.
Not a good sign.
John presses his left arm back to his side.
“C’mere,” John lifts the back of Castiel’s shirt and confirms his suspicion at the blotched patchwork of dark bruises from the joint to his shoulder blade that creep towards his neck and down his back.
They’re darker than the night before and worse than John had suspected.
Those were only the bruises John could see around the bandages over larger cuts and scrapes suggesting Castiel had run into something with claws.
Castiel practically whimpers at the clinical push of John’s fingers at his shoulder.
“Dad. C’mon,” Dean shakes his head, like he’s asking John what he thinks he’s doing.
John gives his son a pointed stare reminding him that he knows exactly what he’s doing.
“He’s torn the ligament. Give me the sling from the other med kit.”
Dean scoops the bag from between the beds and John catches it in one hand.
“Ligament?” Castiel echoes, voice strained.
“It heals,” John eases the sling over his head and sets his arm in its brace.
“Dad, you still going to the police station?” Sam asks from where he’s propped against the headboard of his bed, a large hard cover book in his hands. John can’t see the title but he thinks those are drawings of bunyips on the page.
“Yep.”
“You coming back after?”
Sometimes a job found him without much of a chance to get back to his boys. If it happened today, he wasn’t sure what he’d do with Castiel.
“We’ll see.”
“Is Castiel coming back, too?”
John and Castiel exchange a look. The kid’s eyes search his face and John settles a hand on his head, just a bit too heavily so John doesn’t have to look into that bright blue gaze. He forgets a moment about the bruises on Castiel’s neck and shoulders as Castiel bows under the hand in his hair. Kid doesn’t complain, just sort of grunts.
“Let’s go.”
----
For some reason, John thought realising his own injuries had helped Castiel hold his tongue.
When he was with the boys, John had noticed Castiel was rapt to sit and watch. John wondered if he’d been around many siblings or kids his own age. Whatever had made him shy obviously became a non-issue as soon as soon as he was alone with John and Castiel was again like any other five-year-old.
“Why must I sit in the back seat, John? You allowed me the shotgun vantage last night.”
At least Castiel wasn’t insisting on ‘John Winchester’ at every breath anymore.
“Ride shotgun. You’re too small.”
“But last night—“
“Last night it was late and dark and we weren’t driving to a police station. Understand?”
John glances up in the rear view mirror and sees the edge of Castiel’s reflection pinch with displeasure.
John hadn’t consciously stuck him at the opposite back corner, as far from the driver as possible. The seatbelt came up almost too high across his chest and John would be lucky if he pulled in at the station and none of the other cops noticed his passenger probably should have been riding with a booster seat.
They hadn’t owned a booster seat since Sam outgrew Dean’s inherited toddler chair at age four. After that, they stacked him on clothes, books and blankets until Sam wouldn’t have it anymore. John’s not sure they have enough of anything to improvise like that again….
“Castiel, when we get to the station, you follow my lead,” John says firmly, seeing the sign for the station on the corner of the upcoming intersection, “Don’t speak to anyone. Keep your hands by your sides, don’t take anything, don’t touch anything. Just stick by me.”
“I will stick by you,” Castiel parrots firmly. It’s as good as a ‘Yes, Sir’.
“And not a word in the station about angels, demons or the apocalypse. We don’t need any social services turning up to claim you for the state. You’ve got to tell the truth now, or we can’t find your family. You understand?”
“… Yes. I -- no.”
“Yeah?” John slides into a parking space out the front of the police station. He turns the key off in the ignition and twists around to his passenger in the back seat. “What did I just say?”
Castiel is looking at his hands in his lap. If he was older, John would read his expression as resignation.
“But I told the truth: I can't return to my... family. They won’t take me back, John.”
His eyebrows draw together as he scowls and John doesn’t want to say anything that’ll take them steps back if this kid starts crying again.
John looks at Castiel’s hands wrapped thickly in bandages. He twists back around to the front and unclips his seatbelt. The chances were still fair this kid had some decent kin to take him in.
“We’ll find a place for you.”
John strides through the front door of the police station five minutes later with Castiel at his heels.
He flashes a badge at the front desk.
“Officer Keaton, FBI.”
The young man behind the desk blinks dispassionately at the shiny gold metal in John’s wallet. Glances over John’s leather jacket, denim and hiking boots.
“Working on your day off, huh?”
“I need to check your missing persons database. Do you have federal access here?”
The desk clerk glances down at Castiel who is watching a burbling coffee machine dribble through its morning filter.
“Is it FBI’s ‘bring your kid to work’ day?”
“You must have missed the memo.”
The young man shrugs like it’s not his problem and reaches for a form in a stack behind him.
“Looks like you were at the wrong end of a fight for the last cookie, little man,” He nods at Castiel’s sling and slaps the yellow form down on the desk, “Fill in your access form, I’ll need to clear it with the boss and the boss of your database. If she’s working today.”
The plastic chair wheels squeak when he pushes back from his desk and sets off. Maybe to find out about attendance of the database boss.
John’s hand flies over the form as he completes the fields with enough blend of fiction and facts – ID numbers, stations and staff names of hunters he knows in the right positions who will back up his alias if it’s ever checked. Or at least leave enough of a smoke screen for the time they need to disappear.
“Are you really of the FBI?” Comes the whispered question at his knee.
“I am today,” John mutters under his breath and signs at the bottom.
The young man sidles back to his desk a moment later and regards John’s handiwork with a cursory eye. He takes the pen, witnessing the document and jerks his head in the direction of an important-looking glass office behind him.
“Boss wants a word,” the man says.
Castiel bumps against his knee. John draws him back to look him in the eye, hand light on his shoulder.
“Stay outside by the door where I can see you,” John instructs and Castiel is nodding when the clerk clears his throat apologetically.
“Sorry, man, you should really bring him with you. Station policy – we can’t have unsupervised aliens on the premises.”
“You’re in a police station, not a foreign country, boy.”
“I’m not even a cop! I’m just the desk guy.”
John pushes Castiel forward with a hand behind his good shoulder. “Desk guy. Supervise.”
The guy stammers in bewilderment and regards the kid as John pushes past. He stops at the Captain’s door, grip closing on the handle when something occurs to him. The clerk and the five-year-old are staring at each other and from their faces, John thinks it’s clear who’d be causing concern.
“No candy,” John narrows his eyes at the clerk who just sort of winces and looks at Castiel like he’s toxic hazard that needs a quick disposal.
Castiel tolerates the expression for a moment, but quickly seems to decide the coffee machine still wins for his attention.
John cocks an eyebrow at the clerk’s wary profile and pushes into the Captain’s office.
“Captain,” John flashes the badge one more time before shoving his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, “Officer Keaton, FBI. If it’s not too much inconvenience, I require access to your federal database of missing persons. I’ll be out of your hair in ten.”
The man behind the desk looks nearly at his forties or fresh into that decade. He’s got the loose physique of a man who’s recently become accustomed to the confines of a desk, or who’s rediscovered the comforts of his couch.
John must have caught him in the middle of some private joke. When the Captain looks up from the papers on his desk, his eyes are laughing, mouth pulled in a smirk.
“Officer Keaton,” the Captain pulls a hand through his light brown hair and rises from his chair. The smirk settles into something more serious when he extends his hand. “Welcome to the 77th Precinct. You can call me 'Gabriel'.”
“Gabriel.” John shakes his hand briskly, unsure if he appreciates a man of authority so quick to endear himself to a body of the Feds.
“No.”
It takes a second for Gabriel’s monosyllable to translate into meaning.
“No?” John asks anyway.
“I’m denying your request to access that federal database,” Gabriel says, smiling.
John’s hands twitch to grab his collar, he almost shoves the Captain back against the desk. It’s not personal, only an instinct from years of shunting inhuman things that didn’t die when John told them to.
It takes another second for him to remember he’s dealing with a lawman where different rules apply and consequences are more trouble than they're worth.
“I should tell you it’s only courtesy that I’m lodging the request, my federal privileges entitle—“
Gabriel laughs. The man actually laughs.
“You’re not a federal officer, John.”
The gun on John’s hip is suddenly very cold and very heavy on his belt. He touches the hilt through the inner lining of his jacket pocket.
“… And who the hell are you?”
The man actually looks like he’s considering the response to that question and John wonders how many police officers would charge in if he pulled the gun out right now.
As it happens, the Captain just shrugs with a disarming smile.
“I’m the guy who can drop you on the sinking Titanic if I snapped my fingers, so, pay attention: you don’t need that database. Castiel won’t be on it.”
It occurs to John that he hadn’t mentioned anything about Castiel since setting foot in the station.
“Have you run that boy through this station before?” He asks, because it’s possible the guy was just power drunk and well informed.
“John Winchester,” Gabriel says and his true name makes John tense in alert, “Your orphan ward is a bona fide ‘bred on cloud by the will of God in chorus – hallelujah’ angel. Nobody in this time is looking for him.”
John sneers. “In this time?”
‘Cause, what the hell did that mean?
“If you know all this, I take you to mean you’re in on his game? What does that make you? The angel Gabriel?”
John snickers, even though the man standing in front of him is probably some kind of demon or monster masquerading as a lawman and is going to make John take out his weapon very soon.
No point not taking a moment to laugh before he has to fire.
“I should have said ‘Bob’.”
Gabriel sighs stiffly, like John is testing his patience and Gabriel’s not the one speaking trash.
“Look, big daddy: coming back to this time was his sentence. He could have gone to Paris, Berlin, but he wanted you. He wanted the Winchesters.”
There's something dark in Gabriel’s voice that takes John back to that previous night when he held a silver blade in his hand and threw holy water on Castiel’s face. Gabriel is giving him a warning.
“He was sent for you. Take the hint.”
Gabriel snaps his fingers. It feels like someone’s tugged the carpet from under John’s feet and when he steadies himself, he’s standing beside the Impala in the frigid car park of their motel.
Castiel whirls where he’s suddenly standing at John’s feet. He stares at John in open shock.
“That was an angel! Did you see—“
“Gabriel.”
John watches carefully for what that name means to Castiel. The kid’s face immediately goes slack, stunned and he grows very still.
“Where is he? John, did he speak to you?”
“Said he was Captain of the 77th Precinct. He one of your angel friends, Castiel?"
Castiel doesn’t even feign playing dumb and leaps for the Impala’s passenger door.
“We have to go back. Take us back, John, right now.”
John pushes him away from the door handle and glances back at their motel room, but he can’t see any faces watching at the window.
“Castiel, it's time you listened to me. You tell me just what—“
The door of their room had been open.
Castiel startles when John rushes past him and charges into the motel room.
“Sam? Dean!”
John lunges over the clothes and books strewn everywhere to check the bathroom, but he already knows.
The room is empty.
The sheets from Sam’s bed have been dragged halfway to the door. The book he'd been reading is spilled open on the floor to a picture of a boy peering around thin trees in a dark, misty forest. John smells the discharge of gunpowder and there are three shots in the wall by the door. A fourth shot had taken out the door handle, but all the marks tell John it had been blown open from the outside.
Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn….
He finds blood spatter near the television and it trails back to the door where the wound seems to have been stemmed at the doormat.
“Demons.”
Castiel hovers in the doorway, a hand on the cheap metal frame.
“What?” John barks and checks under the desk. The duffel bag is still there. He yanks it out and gratefully discovers nothing but a few rounds of ammunition missing. Good boy, Dean.
Castiel slowly takes a step into the motel room, “By their scent, I think it was the same demons who took me. Those demons when you found me.”
“You didn’t kill them,” John says, bluntly. He swiftly loads three rounds into the sawn-off shotgun he pulls from the bag.
Castiel almost looks crestfallen. “I suppose I didn’t.”
“All right.”
Castiel yelps when John seizes him by the front of his shirt and heaves him around. Castiel stumbles against the foot of the bed with a choked noise of surprise and John knows he heard the shotgun being cocked.
John glares down the length of the barrel when those blue eyes flicker up to him, wide in alarm.
“Who sent you, Castiel?”
Castiel seems too stunned by the barrel in his face. He blinks from the barrel to John’s face in confusion and no small amount of fear.
“I don’t believing everything the angel Gabriel said, but I can buy that you were sent for me and they took Sam and Dean when they found us gone. So, who sent you? Where did they take them?”
The kid pulls a decent impression of shock. “How would I know that?”
“I’m going to count to three. Kid’s body or no, I’ll shoot unless you sing.”
Castiel’s neck twitches like he wants to shake his head, his mouth is working but all John hears is a croaking lack of cooperation. Castiel finally finds his voice and his eyes are shining with tears, right on cue.
“John, I didn’t betray you! I liaise with no demons—“
“I’ve read the name ‘Castiel’ in enough incantations. Carrying that name doesn’t make you an angel, kid. They probably killed or, hell, even possessed your family, right? But they’re not your family anymore. It’s those demons who hurt you. Don’t let them do the same to my boys.”
“I want to help you,” Castiel’s voice cracks on the tearful admission of ‘help’.
John nods affirmatively, Castiel will help him.
“Tell me where they are.”
“I don’t know.”
“Castiel….”
“I don’t know!” He shouts, hoarse on the edge of a sob.
It’s not going to work on John this time. He gives the kid a minute because with humans that young, their brains tended to completely halt under stress and John had every intention of getting what he needed.
“Think, Castiel.”
Castiel’s face contorts in frustration and he shakes his head, helplessly.
“The barn?”
John had considered that, but it would have been too easy.
“Where else?”
Castiel’s face falls. His fingers rub the ridge of his brow and it’s such an adult gesture, John feels something like pity for the kid. So young, so damn confused. He looks devastated and he’s probably thinking about what his demon kin will perform when they get their hands on him again.
“If they want you, they will make it simple for you to find them,” Castiel says and his face crumples. He doesn’t raise his head. “But their plans aren’t mine. I have nothing to do with them. John, you have to believe me.”
He sounds so miserable. John almost lowers the shotgun.
“I’m sorry, kid,” John tells him and it doesn’t feel like a lie, “I can’t take the chance.”
Part 6
» Fandom: Supernatural
» Warnings: De-ageing!
» Pairing(s)/Characters: wee!Castiel, Winchesters
» Summary: As punishment for disobeying, Castiel is sent back in time in the form of a young child - only to be unofficially adopted by John Winchester.
» A/N: This part is dedicated to the cheerleaders and the great enablers who forgive my delayed updates and keep me charged; you know who you are. Thank you! <3
PREVIOUS: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
John finishes the tail of a thought in his notes against Castiel’s sigil and throws the pen down on the writing pad of his journal.
Some of the symbols are familiar, concerned with seeking a form of energy and one of the scrawls looks close to an invocation. But John’s searching for the meaning when combined with those foreign characters. Castiel’s sigil demonstrates a completely different grammatical form of magic that has him stumped.
Because, unless his judgment is off, the little he does understand don’t suggest the outcome of killing a demon.
John thinks of that piercing light, the shadow of the demons as they fled those bodies convulsing in the hay.
Or had it only been shadows?
John tosses the journal and reference tome into his duffel bag under the desk. It huffs back a pungent cocktail of herbs lined to discourage Sam’s curiousity.
He’s not getting anywhere. He sighs and looks over his shoulder to where Castiel is standing with Dean by the window.
Castiel’s face is dazed, like he’s focused on something faraway other than the towel Dean’s roughly drying his hair with. Dark, wet hair hangs in his eyes and he squeezes them shut when Dean rubs the towel over his face, pushing his fringe back.
John thinks Castiel’s been put through more showers in the last twelve hours than he’s seen in the past week. The kid has come out two shades paler every time.
Dean squashes Castiel’s face into the towel and sniggers under his breath when Castiel scowls unhappily.
“Dean,” He whines and leans away from the offending towel hand.
He gets the towel rubbed in his face again for his complaint. John considers his eldest and the twisted smile on his face. Dean’s attention is only divided when he glances to check Sam’s still occupied with the book on his bed.
He does well.
John leans back in his chair and catches Castiel’s eye, beckoning him to the desk.
“Castiel.”
Dean grunts in annoyance when Castiel bolts. He throws the towel over the kid’s head as he flees and there’s a lean in Castiel’s side, a limp that shows he’s favouring his left when he rounds the bed to John’s knee.
Dean had been right. John feels Dean had more to tell him than just the kid's bung shoulder, but then Castiel had re-emerged, dripping from his shower, and it obviously wasn't something he wanted to discuss with either Castiel or Sam in earshot.
“Hands out, palms up,” John says.
Castiel’s offers his hands. Leaning forward in his chair, John pats them dry with the towel still hanging off his head and peers closely.
He uncurls Castiel’s fingers from the gash on his palm and scrutinises where the kid had cut himself to paint the sigil. He’d used the same hand to trigger the spell and John knows Dean spent a good session of the previous night seeking out splinters with a pair of tweezers.
He turns Castiel’s hand over and runs a thumb over the tiny cut he’d made to test the boy against silver.
It’s almost twelve hours later and both wounds are still threatening to weep.
John frowns and looks into the boy’s face. Castiel’s wide blue eyes are watching him expectantly and John has to look back to his hands. What was it about kids and their ability to stare right into a man, past his words to a truth he hadn’t discovered yet himself?
Sam was the same. John couldn’t know all the answers. Most times he let Dean fill the quiet.
Castiel could be sick. He could be suffering one of those syndromes that made it difficult for his blood to clot. John redresses the wound. Castiel’s face pinches with a disgruntled whine as the bandages wrap tightly.
“I want to look at your shoulder.”
Castiel glances at his left arm warily, like his injury is something he expected to hide better, but he doesn’t protest when John lifts it experimentally.
He finds the point when Castiel winces, startled. He’s frowning in surprise at his own arm where it’s stopped just shy of straight at the shoulder and John waits for the discomfort to fade before he tries again. His other hand braces Castiel’s elbow.
This time Castiel actually cries out, small body folding around the arm in John’s grasp.
Not a good sign.
John presses his left arm back to his side.
“C’mere,” John lifts the back of Castiel’s shirt and confirms his suspicion at the blotched patchwork of dark bruises from the joint to his shoulder blade that creep towards his neck and down his back.
They’re darker than the night before and worse than John had suspected.
Those were only the bruises John could see around the bandages over larger cuts and scrapes suggesting Castiel had run into something with claws.
Castiel practically whimpers at the clinical push of John’s fingers at his shoulder.
“Dad. C’mon,” Dean shakes his head, like he’s asking John what he thinks he’s doing.
John gives his son a pointed stare reminding him that he knows exactly what he’s doing.
“He’s torn the ligament. Give me the sling from the other med kit.”
Dean scoops the bag from between the beds and John catches it in one hand.
“Ligament?” Castiel echoes, voice strained.
“It heals,” John eases the sling over his head and sets his arm in its brace.
“Dad, you still going to the police station?” Sam asks from where he’s propped against the headboard of his bed, a large hard cover book in his hands. John can’t see the title but he thinks those are drawings of bunyips on the page.
“Yep.”
“You coming back after?”
Sometimes a job found him without much of a chance to get back to his boys. If it happened today, he wasn’t sure what he’d do with Castiel.
“We’ll see.”
“Is Castiel coming back, too?”
John and Castiel exchange a look. The kid’s eyes search his face and John settles a hand on his head, just a bit too heavily so John doesn’t have to look into that bright blue gaze. He forgets a moment about the bruises on Castiel’s neck and shoulders as Castiel bows under the hand in his hair. Kid doesn’t complain, just sort of grunts.
“Let’s go.”
----
For some reason, John thought realising his own injuries had helped Castiel hold his tongue.
When he was with the boys, John had noticed Castiel was rapt to sit and watch. John wondered if he’d been around many siblings or kids his own age. Whatever had made him shy obviously became a non-issue as soon as soon as he was alone with John and Castiel was again like any other five-year-old.
“Why must I sit in the back seat, John? You allowed me the shotgun vantage last night.”
At least Castiel wasn’t insisting on ‘John Winchester’ at every breath anymore.
“Ride shotgun. You’re too small.”
“But last night—“
“Last night it was late and dark and we weren’t driving to a police station. Understand?”
John glances up in the rear view mirror and sees the edge of Castiel’s reflection pinch with displeasure.
John hadn’t consciously stuck him at the opposite back corner, as far from the driver as possible. The seatbelt came up almost too high across his chest and John would be lucky if he pulled in at the station and none of the other cops noticed his passenger probably should have been riding with a booster seat.
They hadn’t owned a booster seat since Sam outgrew Dean’s inherited toddler chair at age four. After that, they stacked him on clothes, books and blankets until Sam wouldn’t have it anymore. John’s not sure they have enough of anything to improvise like that again….
“Castiel, when we get to the station, you follow my lead,” John says firmly, seeing the sign for the station on the corner of the upcoming intersection, “Don’t speak to anyone. Keep your hands by your sides, don’t take anything, don’t touch anything. Just stick by me.”
“I will stick by you,” Castiel parrots firmly. It’s as good as a ‘Yes, Sir’.
“And not a word in the station about angels, demons or the apocalypse. We don’t need any social services turning up to claim you for the state. You’ve got to tell the truth now, or we can’t find your family. You understand?”
“… Yes. I -- no.”
“Yeah?” John slides into a parking space out the front of the police station. He turns the key off in the ignition and twists around to his passenger in the back seat. “What did I just say?”
Castiel is looking at his hands in his lap. If he was older, John would read his expression as resignation.
“But I told the truth: I can't return to my... family. They won’t take me back, John.”
His eyebrows draw together as he scowls and John doesn’t want to say anything that’ll take them steps back if this kid starts crying again.
John looks at Castiel’s hands wrapped thickly in bandages. He twists back around to the front and unclips his seatbelt. The chances were still fair this kid had some decent kin to take him in.
“We’ll find a place for you.”
John strides through the front door of the police station five minutes later with Castiel at his heels.
He flashes a badge at the front desk.
“Officer Keaton, FBI.”
The young man behind the desk blinks dispassionately at the shiny gold metal in John’s wallet. Glances over John’s leather jacket, denim and hiking boots.
“Working on your day off, huh?”
“I need to check your missing persons database. Do you have federal access here?”
The desk clerk glances down at Castiel who is watching a burbling coffee machine dribble through its morning filter.
“Is it FBI’s ‘bring your kid to work’ day?”
“You must have missed the memo.”
The young man shrugs like it’s not his problem and reaches for a form in a stack behind him.
“Looks like you were at the wrong end of a fight for the last cookie, little man,” He nods at Castiel’s sling and slaps the yellow form down on the desk, “Fill in your access form, I’ll need to clear it with the boss and the boss of your database. If she’s working today.”
The plastic chair wheels squeak when he pushes back from his desk and sets off. Maybe to find out about attendance of the database boss.
John’s hand flies over the form as he completes the fields with enough blend of fiction and facts – ID numbers, stations and staff names of hunters he knows in the right positions who will back up his alias if it’s ever checked. Or at least leave enough of a smoke screen for the time they need to disappear.
“Are you really of the FBI?” Comes the whispered question at his knee.
“I am today,” John mutters under his breath and signs at the bottom.
The young man sidles back to his desk a moment later and regards John’s handiwork with a cursory eye. He takes the pen, witnessing the document and jerks his head in the direction of an important-looking glass office behind him.
“Boss wants a word,” the man says.
Castiel bumps against his knee. John draws him back to look him in the eye, hand light on his shoulder.
“Stay outside by the door where I can see you,” John instructs and Castiel is nodding when the clerk clears his throat apologetically.
“Sorry, man, you should really bring him with you. Station policy – we can’t have unsupervised aliens on the premises.”
“You’re in a police station, not a foreign country, boy.”
“I’m not even a cop! I’m just the desk guy.”
John pushes Castiel forward with a hand behind his good shoulder. “Desk guy. Supervise.”
The guy stammers in bewilderment and regards the kid as John pushes past. He stops at the Captain’s door, grip closing on the handle when something occurs to him. The clerk and the five-year-old are staring at each other and from their faces, John thinks it’s clear who’d be causing concern.
“No candy,” John narrows his eyes at the clerk who just sort of winces and looks at Castiel like he’s toxic hazard that needs a quick disposal.
Castiel tolerates the expression for a moment, but quickly seems to decide the coffee machine still wins for his attention.
John cocks an eyebrow at the clerk’s wary profile and pushes into the Captain’s office.
“Captain,” John flashes the badge one more time before shoving his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, “Officer Keaton, FBI. If it’s not too much inconvenience, I require access to your federal database of missing persons. I’ll be out of your hair in ten.”
The man behind the desk looks nearly at his forties or fresh into that decade. He’s got the loose physique of a man who’s recently become accustomed to the confines of a desk, or who’s rediscovered the comforts of his couch.
John must have caught him in the middle of some private joke. When the Captain looks up from the papers on his desk, his eyes are laughing, mouth pulled in a smirk.
“Officer Keaton,” the Captain pulls a hand through his light brown hair and rises from his chair. The smirk settles into something more serious when he extends his hand. “Welcome to the 77th Precinct. You can call me 'Gabriel'.”
“Gabriel.” John shakes his hand briskly, unsure if he appreciates a man of authority so quick to endear himself to a body of the Feds.
“No.”
It takes a second for Gabriel’s monosyllable to translate into meaning.
“No?” John asks anyway.
“I’m denying your request to access that federal database,” Gabriel says, smiling.
John’s hands twitch to grab his collar, he almost shoves the Captain back against the desk. It’s not personal, only an instinct from years of shunting inhuman things that didn’t die when John told them to.
It takes another second for him to remember he’s dealing with a lawman where different rules apply and consequences are more trouble than they're worth.
“I should tell you it’s only courtesy that I’m lodging the request, my federal privileges entitle—“
Gabriel laughs. The man actually laughs.
“You’re not a federal officer, John.”
The gun on John’s hip is suddenly very cold and very heavy on his belt. He touches the hilt through the inner lining of his jacket pocket.
“… And who the hell are you?”
The man actually looks like he’s considering the response to that question and John wonders how many police officers would charge in if he pulled the gun out right now.
As it happens, the Captain just shrugs with a disarming smile.
“I’m the guy who can drop you on the sinking Titanic if I snapped my fingers, so, pay attention: you don’t need that database. Castiel won’t be on it.”
It occurs to John that he hadn’t mentioned anything about Castiel since setting foot in the station.
“Have you run that boy through this station before?” He asks, because it’s possible the guy was just power drunk and well informed.
“John Winchester,” Gabriel says and his true name makes John tense in alert, “Your orphan ward is a bona fide ‘bred on cloud by the will of God in chorus – hallelujah’ angel. Nobody in this time is looking for him.”
John sneers. “In this time?”
‘Cause, what the hell did that mean?
“If you know all this, I take you to mean you’re in on his game? What does that make you? The angel Gabriel?”
John snickers, even though the man standing in front of him is probably some kind of demon or monster masquerading as a lawman and is going to make John take out his weapon very soon.
No point not taking a moment to laugh before he has to fire.
“I should have said ‘Bob’.”
Gabriel sighs stiffly, like John is testing his patience and Gabriel’s not the one speaking trash.
“Look, big daddy: coming back to this time was his sentence. He could have gone to Paris, Berlin, but he wanted you. He wanted the Winchesters.”
There's something dark in Gabriel’s voice that takes John back to that previous night when he held a silver blade in his hand and threw holy water on Castiel’s face. Gabriel is giving him a warning.
“He was sent for you. Take the hint.”
Gabriel snaps his fingers. It feels like someone’s tugged the carpet from under John’s feet and when he steadies himself, he’s standing beside the Impala in the frigid car park of their motel.
Castiel whirls where he’s suddenly standing at John’s feet. He stares at John in open shock.
“That was an angel! Did you see—“
“Gabriel.”
John watches carefully for what that name means to Castiel. The kid’s face immediately goes slack, stunned and he grows very still.
“Where is he? John, did he speak to you?”
“Said he was Captain of the 77th Precinct. He one of your angel friends, Castiel?"
Castiel doesn’t even feign playing dumb and leaps for the Impala’s passenger door.
“We have to go back. Take us back, John, right now.”
John pushes him away from the door handle and glances back at their motel room, but he can’t see any faces watching at the window.
“Castiel, it's time you listened to me. You tell me just what—“
The door of their room had been open.
Castiel startles when John rushes past him and charges into the motel room.
“Sam? Dean!”
John lunges over the clothes and books strewn everywhere to check the bathroom, but he already knows.
The room is empty.
The sheets from Sam’s bed have been dragged halfway to the door. The book he'd been reading is spilled open on the floor to a picture of a boy peering around thin trees in a dark, misty forest. John smells the discharge of gunpowder and there are three shots in the wall by the door. A fourth shot had taken out the door handle, but all the marks tell John it had been blown open from the outside.
Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn….
He finds blood spatter near the television and it trails back to the door where the wound seems to have been stemmed at the doormat.
“Demons.”
Castiel hovers in the doorway, a hand on the cheap metal frame.
“What?” John barks and checks under the desk. The duffel bag is still there. He yanks it out and gratefully discovers nothing but a few rounds of ammunition missing. Good boy, Dean.
Castiel slowly takes a step into the motel room, “By their scent, I think it was the same demons who took me. Those demons when you found me.”
“You didn’t kill them,” John says, bluntly. He swiftly loads three rounds into the sawn-off shotgun he pulls from the bag.
Castiel almost looks crestfallen. “I suppose I didn’t.”
“All right.”
Castiel yelps when John seizes him by the front of his shirt and heaves him around. Castiel stumbles against the foot of the bed with a choked noise of surprise and John knows he heard the shotgun being cocked.
John glares down the length of the barrel when those blue eyes flicker up to him, wide in alarm.
“Who sent you, Castiel?”
Castiel seems too stunned by the barrel in his face. He blinks from the barrel to John’s face in confusion and no small amount of fear.
“I don’t believing everything the angel Gabriel said, but I can buy that you were sent for me and they took Sam and Dean when they found us gone. So, who sent you? Where did they take them?”
The kid pulls a decent impression of shock. “How would I know that?”
“I’m going to count to three. Kid’s body or no, I’ll shoot unless you sing.”
Castiel’s neck twitches like he wants to shake his head, his mouth is working but all John hears is a croaking lack of cooperation. Castiel finally finds his voice and his eyes are shining with tears, right on cue.
“John, I didn’t betray you! I liaise with no demons—“
“I’ve read the name ‘Castiel’ in enough incantations. Carrying that name doesn’t make you an angel, kid. They probably killed or, hell, even possessed your family, right? But they’re not your family anymore. It’s those demons who hurt you. Don’t let them do the same to my boys.”
“I want to help you,” Castiel’s voice cracks on the tearful admission of ‘help’.
John nods affirmatively, Castiel will help him.
“Tell me where they are.”
“I don’t know.”
“Castiel….”
“I don’t know!” He shouts, hoarse on the edge of a sob.
It’s not going to work on John this time. He gives the kid a minute because with humans that young, their brains tended to completely halt under stress and John had every intention of getting what he needed.
“Think, Castiel.”
Castiel’s face contorts in frustration and he shakes his head, helplessly.
“The barn?”
John had considered that, but it would have been too easy.
“Where else?”
Castiel’s face falls. His fingers rub the ridge of his brow and it’s such an adult gesture, John feels something like pity for the kid. So young, so damn confused. He looks devastated and he’s probably thinking about what his demon kin will perform when they get their hands on him again.
“If they want you, they will make it simple for you to find them,” Castiel says and his face crumples. He doesn’t raise his head. “But their plans aren’t mine. I have nothing to do with them. John, you have to believe me.”
He sounds so miserable. John almost lowers the shotgun.
“I’m sorry, kid,” John tells him and it doesn’t feel like a lie, “I can’t take the chance.”
Part 6
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Date: 2010-04-11 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-04-11 04:07 pm (UTC)Awesome line!
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Date: 2010-04-11 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-04-11 10:48 pm (UTC)I'm so happy this worked for you as I wrote most of it in one sleepless stint (it probably shows), it felt like the right time to bring Gabriel in and I'm glad you enjoyed him! John is a bit of righteous bastard and everyone else in the room is too small to tell him otherwise. That family really suffers for the loss of Mary!
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Date: 2010-04-11 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-04-12 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 12:03 pm (UTC)You know, when I started this story I honestly didn't intend for Cas to get such a bad deal... he was just so little, powerless, and alone. And then when he wasn't alone he was different.
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Date: 2010-04-12 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 02:10 am (UTC)Another excellent chapter and a random shout out? Be still my little heart!
Awesome, as always. I continue to be intrigued! Wee!Castiel is adorable, and I'm glad to see him getting a little Winchester-style TLC. Gabriel's cameo in the police station was surprising and I wonder what he's up to! And never in a million years did I expect the boys to get kidnapped--oh noes! Double oh noes now that John seems to have lost what little faith he had in Cas!
Did anyone ever tell you that you do a really nice job with writing kids? You do. And I don't know why, but I absolutely loved Castiel's fascination with the coffee maker. It seemed very true to the character/situation and cracked me up! I also find it interesting that Cas would ask John if he's really FBI--you think he'd know, hanging around future!Dean as much as he does. Now I'm wondering about the implications of that line ;) And speaking of lines, “Why must I sit in the back seat, John? You allowed me the shotgun vantage last night.” made me lol something fierce. Oh, Castiel.
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Date: 2010-04-14 11:02 am (UTC)[lol] Thank you so much for the awesome review and (ahem) not making me feel guilty about Cas in this part, because I know I've given him a hard time -- but I have plans!
Did anyone ever tell you that you do a really nice job with writing kids? You do.
That's so nice of you to say! <3 Little people and their crazy, uninhibited ways crack me up, even when they're exhausting. I'm relying a lot on the boys to keep this from completely devolving into simple miniaturised!man pain. You know, returning to a time when pain was still funny for boys.
Having Gabriel around also helps to keep the mischief afoot. ;]
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Date: 2010-05-01 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-07-02 06:39 am (UTC)Back in April my day job cranked up by a thousand degrees, but now that we're in the new financial year I might have a chance to get my life back, sleep on occasion, and finish this, too! I'm glad you're still interested although the season's over, thank you for letting me know. :]
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