Chapter Text
Castiel
The city is unsettled.
It looks the same as always: weathered concrete giants reaching for the darkened sky, their silhouettes sliced through with squares of light that dim the stars until no human eye can perceive them. The thick, humid night air funnels the usual cacophony of sound up to him from the street level: snatches of conversation and laughter, sirens, the dyspeptic rattle of a damaged muffler.
But looks can be deceiving. Castiel knows that better than anyone.
For all an outside observer knows, he is a perfectly ordinary man in a trenchcoat, standing on a rooftop to look out on the night-draped city; perhaps sharing the view with his children, pointing out landmarks.
“Fucking show-off,” Claire groans, and the fragile illusion of normalcy breaks.
Jack is drifting a foot off the ground, just beyond the edge of the parapet. He grins, pleased with himself, as he looks down to watch the endless churn of traffic pass below his feet. His halo’s glow illuminates his face in shades of gold.
“Focus, Jack,” Castiel tells him.
“I am focused,” Jack insists. “It’s taking a lot of focus not to fall.”
“That’s precisely what I’m concerned about, and you know it. Your focus should be on the hunt.”
“Are we hunting?” Claire asks. She is standing just to Jack’s left, safely atop the parapet, though altogether too close to the edge for Castiel’s liking. “Seems to me like we’re standing on a rooftop with our thumbs up our asses.”
“Language, Claire.”
Claire shrugs, morose. Her index finger taps restlessly against the handle of the curved blade she favors, specially blessed to kill infernals. “Just feels like we’ve been here for hours is all.”
With a weary sigh, Castiel returns his attention to the view of the city. Since the Rapture, it has been difficult for many celestials to find their purpose, their place in this world. Castiel found his purpose in fatherhood.
Still, he does occasionally regret his choices.
He reaches deep within himself, for the grace that pulses at his center. As always, drawing forth his grace reminds him of the empty space where Jimmy’s soul used to be. Gone now. Gone like so many others.
Impatient, he pushes that empty feeling aside. He’s grieved for Jimmy, and he will continue to do so, but now is not the time.
Castiel’s halo flares to life around his head, his eyes lighting up electric blue as he turns his consciousness outward, grace-enhanced senses searching the corners of the city for the thing that has it feeling so off-kilter.
There. His grace homes in on an alley three blocks to the northeast. Castiel tilts his head to the side, sharpening his focus. It allows him to sense the steady thud, thud, thud of a heartbeat. No, two. Two humans, and—
A shadow. A shadow that doesn’t belong.
One of the humans screams. The voice belongs to a girl no older than Claire.
Castiel draws his grace into himself, his consciousness settling back into his vessel. (No, not a vessel any longer. Just his body, these days. The reminder, as always, aches like a slow-healing wound.)
“The alley between Thirty-Fourth Street and Avenue B,” he says.
Instantly, Jack and Claire’s attention is on him. They may get bored and talk back, but Castiel has at least raised them to react quickly to danger. Jack reaches for Claire, their hands meeting halfway between them, fingers clasping. In a whoosh of displaced air, they disappear. Castiel spreads his wings, tucked invisibly into the ether, and follows.
They touch down almost at the same time, at the mouth of the alley. It has all the usual hallmarks of a city backstreet: a scent of decay and stale piss, trash gathering in corners like manmade snowdrifts.
But Castiel’s grace didn’t lead him astray: halfway down the alley, a massive shadow looms. It isn’t cast by the opposite building, or by anything else. It’s alive.
As Castiel watches, the shadow lengthens, growing taller and taller above the cowering figures of two humans curled around each other on the ground. The shadow grows impossible, spider-thin limbs that end in sharply taloned claws. The longest limb moves, so fast that even Castiel finds it difficult to track.
One of the humans on the ground, an adult man, hisses in pain. A long, thin cut has opened on his back.
With a furious roar, Claire charges forward. She may be the only one among them without celestial powers, but she doesn’t lack for bravery.
“Claire!” he calls after her, but she’s already in the alley, drawing her curved blade in a wide arc above the cowering humans.
It makes absolutely no difference to the shadow on the wall, except in the sense that its attention has been drawn to Claire. It lashes out in another snakelike motion, and now there is a cut on Claire’s arm. With a hiss of pain, she drops the blade.
“Jack.” Castiel pivots, turning to his son. “It’s not corporeal. We need a different approach.”
Jack nods, his eyes lighting up with the golden glow of a nephil’s soul-grace.
“Close your eyes!” Castiel shouts at the humans as Jack’s entire body illuminates, too blinding for ordinary eyes to safely perceive.
Castiel summons his grace and sends it outward, joining his blue-white light to Jack’s.
The alley floods with the radiance of their combined power. It banishes the night itself from the alley, turning it bright as noon on a summer’s day.
All things that belong to the darkness — infernals included — should be consumed by the strength of their combined powers. And yet, the shadow upon the wall remains unchanged.
No, not unchanged. It’s moving. Moving away from Claire and the other humans, and towards Jack and Castiel.
The sharp swipe of a claw against Castiel’s cheek surprises him so much that he cries out. Before he can react, a sharp pain erupts across his chest. Another cut opens there, dark-red blood welling from it.
He can afford to spare a little human blood, but what he certainly can’t afford is to let the thing slice his throat and drain his grace.
“Jack! Claire!” he calls. “We need to retreat!”
To their credit, Jack and Claire respond immediately. Jack takes flight, touching down next to the two humans. His hand lands on the human man’s uninjured shoulder. Claire holds out one hand to the girl and the other to Jack. Within seconds, all four of them have vanished.
Deprived of its prey, the shadow redoubles its focus on Castiel. A cut opens on his stomach; another along his leg.
Whatever this thing is, it must be old, ancient even, to be immune to the radiance of celestial light.
“Who are you?” Castiel demands, in Sumerian, the oldest known human language. Another cut opens on his chest, deeper than the others. Getting dangerously close to his throat. He cannot keep the thing away; it has no form for him to grapple with. “Identify yourself.”
No response. On the wall beside him, one of the impossibly bent, taloned limbs rises again, this time no doubt intent on Castiel’s throat.
Before the blow can land, the creature vanishes, as suddenly and completely as though banished by an invisible force.
Castiel doesn’t bother trying to solve the mystery: he needs to heal his wounds and ensure both his family and the humans they’ve saved are well. He flares his wings and vanishes.
***
Claire
Claire staggers as they touch down. No matter how many times she flies along with Jack or Cas, the sensation of traveling from place to place in the blink of an eye is hard to get used to.
To anchor herself in reality again, she fixed her eyes on familiar landmarks: the couch where she hangs with Jack for movie nights. The stove where Cas tries — and pretty often fails — to cook dinners that are palatable for a human, or even a half-human like Jack. The wall of photographs that Claire loves some days and hates others. (Sometimes, you just don’t want to be reminded of your dead and/or missing parents.)
The other humans in their group are disoriented too; they’re probably even less used to flying. The girl holding Claire’s hand wobbles on the spot, so Claire tightens her grip and wraps an arm around her shoulder to steady her. The girl stares at her, wide-eyed and startled. There are nasty cuts on both her cheeks. She has really pretty eyes.
“Thank you,” she says.
“Where the fuck are we?” The other human has shrugged off Jack’s hand on his shoulder. The cut on his back is still bleeding. He’s scanning the walls like he expects them to attack him. For the first time, Claire notices there’s a gun in his hand: a Colt, with some kind of sigil etched into the barrel. A human hunter, then?
Shit. Maybe they’ve brought someone dangerous into their home. Where the hell is Cas?
“You’re at our house,” Jack tells the stranger, cheerful as always. It’d take a whole lot more than an angry dude with a gun to knock Jack off-kilter. Sometimes, that relentless optimism annoys her, but more often, it makes her want to cover him in bubble wrap. Jack’s lost people, just like Claire has; he’s just better at pretending it’s fine. “This place is warded. We’ll be safe here.”
The man scoffs. “I don’t care how powerful your warding is. If those things can survive a smiting, they won’t raise a fucking eyebrow at a couple scratches on the wall.”
“Fuck,” the girl next to Claire mutters. She still seems shaky, so Claire leads her over to the kitchen table and pulls out a chair.
“What’s your name?” she asks, making her voice as soft as it can go, which isn’t very. She’s never been good at comfort.
“Kaia,” the girl says, brushing thick dark hair off her face. “And you?”
“Claire. And don’t listen to that asshole. Jack’s right. You’re safe here.”
“Hey!” the man hollers. “Watch who you’re calling an asshole!”
Claire ignores him, and also the fact that she doesn’t know if Jack’s right or not. Judging by the way Kaia’s whole body starts to relax out of its tripwire tension, she heard what she needed to hear. That’s all that matters for now.
“Can I heal you, Claire?” Jack asks, coming over to join them. Claire doesn’t miss the slightly wary look he gives the new guy as he walks. Jack might be half-celestial and more powerful than any of them really understand, but he’s also younger than Claire. Her little brother, in every way that matters.
“Sure, Jack,” she says, and with him, being gentle takes almost no effort at all.
Jack hovers his hand next to Claire’s skin, the familiar warm tingle of his grace slipping inside her as the cuts on her face and shoulder close up.
Claire sighs with relief as the burn of the cuts recedes and finally vanishes.
“I can do that for you too,” Jack tells Kaia, shoulders hunched to make himself look smaller. “If you want.”
“Does it hurt?” Kaia asks, then, “Actually, I don’t care. Just do it.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Claire promises her anyway.
She averts her eyes from Jack healing Kaia, watching the other guy pace the room instead. He’s pretty clearly looking for a way to leave, but he won’t find it. There’s a door, but it’s spelled to respond only to Cas, Jack, Claire and any guests they choose to include in the circle. It’s part of what makes this place so safe, along with the wardings and the fact that from the outside, the house where they live looks abandoned. Another spell.
The guy heads for the staircase that’ll lead him up to the library and the bedrooms, but stops short when the flutter of wings sounds and Cas materializes next to the fridge.
“Where have you been?” Claire asks. She sounds mad, though she doesn’t mean to. Cas is a dork, but she worries about him anyway. Especially since he's clearly covered in cuts that are only just beginning to close up.
“I attempted to engage the entity in conversation,” Cas says. “It didn’t work.”
Claire snorts. Trust Cas to try the power of peace, love and understanding on a murderous shadow monster.
“Is everyone alright?” Cas asks, looking around. He looks fine now, the cuts closed and the blood gone from his shirt and suit.
Claire and Jack respond in the affirmative. Kaia nods, the cuts on her face completely gone now too. The Maybe-Hunter glowers at them, still hovering at the bottom of the stairs.
“You’re celestials,” he says. Not quite an insult, but just around the corner from one.
“I’m not, actually, but yeah, the rest of my family is. That a problem?” Claire asks. She set her blade down on the table when she pulled out the chair for Kaia. Now, her fingers itch to pick it up again. Not that bringing a blade, even a specially blessed one, to a gunfight would do her much good.
“My name is Castiel, and these are my children, Jack and Claire,” Cas says, calm and unflappable as he always is until someone really pisses him off. (Claire should know.)
“I’m Kaia,” Kaia adds.
“It’s very nice to meet you.” Cas gives her a courteous little bow, the fucking dork, before he turns to the guy with the gun. “It would seem that it’s your turn to introduce yourself.”
It looks at first as if the guy’s going to refuse. His grip on his gun is tight and his shoulders are up to his ears. Blood drips from his cut, visible through a tear in his shirt.
“Dean,” he says finally, between gritted teeth.
“Hello, Dean,” Cas says. “As you’re in mine and my children’s home, I’m going to ask you to put your gun away. It won’t hurt me or Jack, but it could hurt Claire, and it’s also just bad manners.” He glances meaningfully at Claire. “Speaking of which, does that blade belong on the kitchen table, Claire?”
“No,” she mutters resentfully. “It belongs in my room.”
Cas nods, satisfied, when she picks up the blade and heads for the stairs. On a whim, she turns to Kaia. “You wanna come see my room?”
Kaia smiles the smallest of smiles, half covered by a curtain of dark hair that’s fallen over her face again, despite her best efforts to brush it away. “Sure.”
They head past the man — Dean — and up the stairs. Dean’s voice follows them down the hallway and into Claire’s room, demanding to be let out of the apartment. Cas’ voice is rising in response; he’s obviously losing patience.
“Wow,” Kaia says, frowning as she follows Claire past the old-fashioned sconces and flowery wallpaper that Cas likes for some reason; probably because he’s older than dirt. “I had no idea that guy was so angry. I’d probably be dead by now if he hadn’t found me. And we’d both be dead if you guys hadn’t shown up.”
They’ve reached Claire’s room now, and Claire gestures for Kaia to walk in ahead of her. Kaia does, wide-eyed as she takes it all in: the overflowing laundry hamper, the posters of Claire’s favorite bands, the wall case where she keeps her pride and joy: a growing collection of knives, daggers and swords.
“D’you have any idea what those things were?” Claire asks Kaia.
Kaia shrugs. “No. And I don't... I don't really want to talk about them right now? If that's okay."
"Sure." Feeling weirdly nervous, Claire asks, "You want me to show you my blades instead?"
Kaia says "yes" and it's a real, actual struggle to pretend like this is something Claire can be cool about.
***
Dean
A flutter of wings, and then Dean’s alone in the crappy room he’s rented at a boardinghouse in the worst part of town. His shoulder still tingles with the afterimage of touch where the celestial gripped him to take him along.
Dean rolls his shoulders to dispel the disorienting sensation. He sets his gun down on the nightstand by his bed. The wood is scratched, pockmarked with cigarette burns.
Too late, it occurs to Dean that he should be in pain. His flannel is still wet with blood where the ugly shadow fucker scratched him. Got him deep, too. Now, as he twists to get a better view of the wound, he could almost swear that his skin looks pristine under all that blood.
He walks over to the tarnished mirrors above the cracked little sink, just to check. Shrugs out of his shirt. Sure enough, underneath the caked-on blood pulling at the skin of his back, the cut is gone.
“I told you not to heal me, you son of a bitch,” he mutters to himself. Wonders if that’s considered a prayer, then discards the notion as unimportant.
Still, as he pulls a new shirt out of his duffel and considers if he’s up for facing the communal shower down the hall, a thought creeps its way into his head.
Maybe I was too hard on the guy.
Less than five minutes ago, Dean asked to be taken back to this room, where he has all his weapons with him and knows all the wardings, because he put them up himself. To Castiel’s credit, he only made one attempt to get Dean to stay before flying him back without a single complaint.
And if Dean’s honest with himself, his issue isn’t so much with Castiel as it is with celestials in general. Admittedly, the Rapture probably wasn’t their fault. In his more reasonable moments, he believes that. He just hasn’t felt especially inclined to be reasonable lately. Not with Sam in the wind, and every awful scenario racing through his head about it.
What if it’s happening all over again?
Thing is, if that was the case, then the smart, strategic thing to do would’ve been to befriend the celestials and feel them out. See what they know. Sam was last seen on security camera footage about two blocks from this boardinghouse, and the celestials are locals. If anybody knows what’s what, it’d be them.
Fuck. Yeah. He shouldn't have been so quick to lose his temper and demand to be taken home. It’s just that the fight with that shadow freak had him all shook up. Bullets and blades didn’t work on it. It had no body; nothing for him to fight against as it slashed into him and that poor girl whose screams had drawn him to that alley.
All his years hunting monsters, he’s never seen anything like it.
He’s so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice the shadow moving in the corner. Not until a wickedly sharp talon slices into the skin of his chest.
***
Jack
Cas looks frightened.
He’s the most stoic, dependable person Jack has ever known, but he’s wide-eyed and trembling all over now, halo flaring with agitation as he bends over the pale, blood-drenched human on the floor.
The sight of all that blood freezes Jack in place. Moments ago, he and Cas were in the kitchen, chatting over a cup of coffee. Mid-sentence through a story about the creation of the horsehead nebula, Cas stopped, sitting stock-still with his head cocked to the side.
Since the Rapture, it’s highly unusual for anyone to pray to celestials anymore, but Jack was taught the signs and recognized them.
“The shadows,” Cas said, his body jolting back into motion. “They’re back.”
He vanished instantly, only to reappear seconds later, cradling the man who had stalked through their home with a gun in hand.
“Jack, help me!” Cas calls. He sounds frantic. “We need to move quickly. He’s lost too much blood already.”
Jolted out of his shock, Jack takes flight and materializes next to Cas and the man’s — Dean, Jack remembers — lifeless body. His bare torso is littered with deep, angry-looking scratches that weep blood onto the floor. There is a particularly worrisome slash against his throat. Cas is already working on that one, grace flaring brightly in his halo, his eyes, the palm of his hand.
Jack works on Dean’s belly, where a few slashes have gone deep enough to damage organs. He focuses his mind and his grace on all the places where flesh has been torn, knitting it back together.
There is a clatter of feet on the stairs. Probably Claire and Kaia coming down to investigate. Jack doesn’t let himself stop; not when he can feel the way Dean’s pulse is weak and slow even now that they’ve stopped the flow of blood.
It takes a long time to close all the cuts. When they’re finished, Jack feels drained. He drops back to sit on the floor, his head spinning. Opposite him, Cas doesn’t look much better.
“He’ll rest now,” Cas says, his voice shaking with the effort of the healing. “We should take him upstairs and make him comfortable. My bed will do.”
Jack nods. As a full-blooded celestial, Cas doesn’t sleep. He enjoys resting in bed, but it isn’t necessary the way it is for Claire, or occasionally for Jack.
“Claire, will you help me lift him?” Cas asks, and Jack tries not to take it personally that Cas asked her instead of him.
Even drained as Cas would be after such a prolonged use of his grace, he wouldn’t need help lifting Dean’s weight. He’s trying to make Claire feel useful, included. It’s hard for her sometimes, being the only human in their family.
“I’ll help too,” Kaia says.
The three of them pick Dean up slowly, carefully, and navigate their way up the stairs. Jack slumps back down in front of his cup of coffee. So little time has passed that it’s still warm.
He sips at it slowly, his eyes finding the same thing they often do: the frames that contain pictures of all the people they’ve lost. Claire’s parents. Jack’s mom. His other parent, in the beautiful female vessel she’d been using when the Rapture happened.
I’m being useful too, he prays. I help, and I’m loved and wanted.
He means the words to be a challenge. Cas would tell him it’s not kind to cause his parent pain on purpose, especially when she’s already grieving. But she caused Jack pain too when she dumped him with Cas like an inconvenience after they’d already lost everyone else.
So he figures it’s only fair.