Chapter Text
It was pretty standard, as hunts went. They’d gotten reports of a demonic omens surrounding the little town of Riverside, Iowa, and had packed into the Impala to go check it out. Even Cas was with them, roused from his Netflix-induced stupor by the promise of a road trip and some uncomplicated demon-smiting. Dean was in a better mood than he’d been in in weeks. No major emergencies (aside from the Darkness, which had been a background major emergency for so long it barely registered), Sam beside him, Cas in the back, and the open road stretching ahead. He belted out every song that came on the radio, even the cheesy ones, if only to make Sam stare at him in unabashed horror.
“—I’d crawl upon the floor! Come crashing through the do-or! Baby I can’t—“
“Dean.”
“—this feeling anyMOOORE—“
Sam’s disapproving face had gone about three notches more disapproving. “Dean, I’m picking something up.”
Dean stopped singing immediately, and turned the radio volume down. In the rearview mirror, he could see Cas’s expression shift from one of perplexed….longing? (no, couldn’t be) to one of concern. “What?” Dean asked.
“I don’t know, exactly,” Sam said. He had rigged up some sort of portable demon detector from an iPad and some old equipment at the bunker, and was staring into it as he fiddled with the knobs. “I don’t think it’s another demon. But there’s something weird here. Like a, a disturbance. Elecromagnetic weirdness. Strange air currents.”
“Let me see,” Cas said, reaching up to the front seat so Sam could hand him the gadget. He peered at it for a few moments, then said, “It’s weak, as if it happened some time ago. But I think I know what this is.”
Dean and Sam waited, but when Cas’s dramatic beat turned into several long seconds in which he started examining the reading again, Dean cleared his throat. “And what is it?”
Cas looked up, mildly startled, then answered. “These are the same kinds of phenomena that one sees when a temporal rift is created in the fabric of the universe. Dean. Someone has been traveling in time.”
They all processed the information for a beat.
“Angels?” Sam asked.
“Another one of those time god dudes?” Dean guessed.
Cas shook his head.
“What, then?” Dean asked.
“I don’t know,” Cas said. “Whatever this is…I’ve never seen anything like it.”
-
They arrived Riverside about an hour later. The readings had intensified as they’d approached, though Cas claimed he could still make neither heads nor tails of it. As he pulled in to the main street, Dean honked at two guys, one of whom was wearing an absurd hat that could really only be described as a Gilligan’s Island hat, who nearly walked into the side of the Impala while strolling in the middle of the road, then pulled over to the side. The plan was to ignore the weird temporal readings for the moment and treat this like any case. Talk to the locals, look for sulfur, do a little stabbing and smiting. It was possible, after all, that the wacky readings were just a coincidence. Or that Sam’s jerry-rigged doodad had crapped out.
It was good to be on a case.
A kid working at the gas station said that he didn’t know of anything super unusual, except that apparently two guys in weird-ass outfits had robbed a store down the block, killing the proprietor. “Weird-ass,” in this case, turned out to mean bright yellow shirts with little designs on them, along with knee-high heeled boots. With that info, they made their way to the local police station, flashed their FBI badges, and learned that despite the two clowns having been caught on camera, no one had any idea who they were. Nor had they actually robbed the place—they’d just gone in, killed the store’s owner, a woman by the name of Jessica Kirk, whose only remaining family was a brother who lived on a farm about an hour outside of town.
They went to talk to the brother but found him unavailable, at least according to his wife. He’d been out of town on business and was hurrying back to see to his sister’s arrangements, the poor thing. They told the wife to call them as soon as he showed up.
By then, night was falling, and they booked two rooms in the Star Gaz-R motel just outside of town. (Cas insisted that he would be fine sleeping on the floor or anywhere else in a single room, and that Dean shouldn’t spend his money on a whole other room for him. Dean had told him not to be stupid and booked another room.)
Now, they were at the local bar, finishing up greasy bar food dinners and having a couple of drinks. They’d squeezed into a small booth. Sam, being a sasquatch, had one side to himself, while Dean and Cas were rubbing elbows on the other side. Behind Sam, Dean could see the pair of men he’d nearly run over earlier in the day. The tall one, whose severe, angular face in no way matched his jaunty Gilligan hat, was deep in conversation with his companion, a shorter blonde man, but their voices were low enough that Dean couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Dean, Sam, and Cas sipped their beers contemplatively for a few minutes.
“You think the farmer was really out of town?” Dean said. “Seems like a bit of a coincidence.”
Sam tilted his head, considering. “I mean, he could have been on a business trip. Like, a tractor expo or something? Cas said the wife wasn’t a demon. So if she was lying she was doing it on her own.”
Cas didn’t have his full powers back yet after Rowena’s attack dog spell, but he had been pretty sure about that.
“Guys in yellow might’ve been possessed,” Dean said. Their eyes hadn’t been black on the surveillance video, but not every demon conveniently turned and blinked black for the camera. “Maybe she knew something. She sure as hell didn’t seem too concerned about the situation.”
“Yes,” Cas agreed. “Perhaps she or her husband are connected to the killers in some way.”
“Or she wanted him and his family gone and the demons took care of it,” Sam said. “I’ll check the records and see if they’ve got any inheritance coming, or anything like that.”
“Might be worth staking out the place,” Dean said, thinking aloud. “Who knows. Maybe the dudes who ganked Kirk—” Dean stopped suddenly when the man sitting in the booth on the other side of the divider started and twisted to look at him. The man turned back quickly, but Dean had lost his train of thought anyway. “...Me and Cas can do the stakeout tonight, if you want to get started on the research, Sammy,” he finished in a lower voice. “There’s definitely something doesn’t add up here.”
“Fine with me,” Sam said, giving Dean and Cas a little smirk like he thought something was funny. Dean squinted at him. “Just, ah, drop me off at the motel first, will you?”
As they left the booth, Dean overheard a snatch of conversation coming from the pair in the other booth—they were trying, apparently, to figure out what the numbers scrawled on the check meant, and how they were supposed to use money to pay for them. The last he heard was the tall Hat Guy saying, in a deep, serious baritone, “Fascinating.”
-
“Nothin’ like a stakeout, huh?” Dean said to Cas.
The Impala was parked along the road leading up to the old farmhouse, just nestled enough in a patch of overgrown bushes that it wouldn’t be directly visible from the house.
Cas considered. “I suppose not. Although. Humans do sometimes sit in parked cars and watch for other phenomena, don’t they? I imagine birdwatching might be like a stakeout, for example.”
Dean smirked and gave him the side-eye, not sure if Cas was yanking his chain. “Uh, yeah. I guess.”
They sat in silence for a few moments. Dean stared out the window, and wished the maybe-demons in yellow would just get a move on already.
“Dean…” Cas said eventually, sounding (for a guy who seemed to have no problem blurting out just about anything else) unusually hesitant.
“Hm?” Dean said, glancing over at him.
“I just wanted to say thank you,” Cas said awkwardly, the words coming out too fast. “For…taking me back in. Into the bunker, that is. And for bringing me along with you. I’ve already thanked Sam, but I know that for you, it must be different. Because of what I did.”
Dean’s eyebrows drew together. He certainly remembered Cas’s turn as Rowena’s attack dog, but after what he’d done to Cas under the influence of the mark, it hardly seemed worth mentioning. “Uh. It’s no problem. You know. You’re always welcome in the bunker.”
“Am I?” Cas sounded sad, and Dean wished he could see him better than the dim light filtering into the car allowed. “I don’t do very much. I haven’t been able to help you like I used to.”
“So?” Dean said, getting increasingly confused about where this was going. “You were sick. Who said you need to do stuff?”
Cas closed his eyes, and his voice came out strained. “Dean, ever since… ever since Rowena… I’ve had trouble. I keep remembering the things I did to you. Seeing them again. When I don’t want to.”
“So?” Dean said again. “That’s normal. Not saying it doesn’t suck, but…” he shrugged.
“It’s not normal for an angel,” Cas said. Now that he’d begun talking he seemed desperate for Dean to understand something. “I’ve been thinking. Trying to understand why I should be having such vivid memories of this unbidden. This isn’t the first time I’ve hurt people, Dean, or even hurt you.”
“And?” Dean said.
Cas took a deep breath. “Dean, you have to understand, I’ve never felt this way before. Or rather, I did, but it was new and I didn’t understand. This time, I hurt you even though I—I—” but whatever Cas was going to confess, it wasn’t the time. Out of nowhere, a van making the most horrible grinding noises Dean had ever heard coming out of an engine flew by them on the road and screeched and jerked to a stop right in front of the farmhouse.
It was—and Dean was almost done with even being surprised—the men they’d seen on the street and at the bar. The blonde one had been driving, and the tall one (who had lost the ridiculous hat) staggered out of the passenger’s seat looking decidedly woozy.
“Come on,” Dean said, shouldering his door open and grabbing his handgun. The men apparently hadn’t noticed the Impala and were walking slowly up to the farmhouse. They had some sort of Taser-looking weapons.
Cas opened his own door, which scraped along the bushes Dean had parked in, and got out as well. Dean had given him a gun but he could see Cas’s eyes glowing slightly, as if he were gathering his smiting power. Well, that was fine with Dean. He motioned for Cas to follow him up toward the house, keeping to the shadows of the bushes and the line of the house. The two men didn’t seem to notice them, intent on approaching the house.
As soon as he got close enough, he grabbed the blonde guy and spun him around, pinning him against the side of the house with one forearm, pointing the gun at him with the other hand. Cas grabbed the tall guy and pinioned him similarly.
“Who the hell are you?” Dean snapped at the blonde guy. “Are you following us?”
The blonde guy, who was several inches shorter than him, glared up at him. “No. We’re not. We’re looking for our friends.”
“Your friends?” Dean echoed, looking between them.
The he stopped, and stared, for the tall guy had unmistakably pointed ears. Cas had apparently noticed already, for he had been already looking at them with interest.
“All right,” Dean growled, shoving the blonde guy against the wall again. “What are you two?”
“I’m human,” the Blonde Guy said.
“All right, smart guy,” Dean said. “What is he?”
“Dean,” Cas said urgently.
“What?” Dean snapped.
“Demons. Nearby. I sense them.”
“Him?” Dean asked, nodding at the guy with the ears.
“No,” Cas said, craning his head around to sense them. Dean did the same.
As soon as Dean and Cas’s attention were off of the strange pair, however, they sprung into motion. The short guy kneed Dean in the gut, while Dean doubled over gasping, pulled out his Taser thing and jabbed it against Dean’s shoulder. The energy from it knocked him sideways and he landed on his ass, gun flying out of his hand, his vision swimming in and out. At the same time the tall guy pulled an arm free from Cas’s grip with surprising strength and deliver a pinch to his shoulder. When Cas looked at his hand, confusion plain on his face, the man’s eyes widened imperceptibly. Cas grabbed his hand, twisting it around with an audible crack and throwing the guy against the house, face-first this time.
“Spock!” the blonde guy yelled, then changed a setting and shot Cas with his Taser-thing. A bright line of light shot out from it, energy radiating out where it hit Cas in the side and tossed him backward. Cas hit the ground hard, a smoking hole in his trench coat, and lay still. Dean watched the whole thing as if from underwater, the sights and sounds oddly muted. His whole body stung and he couldn’t think clearly.
“Spock, are you hurt?” the blonde guy was asking.
“Fine, Captain,” the tall guy said, cradling one hand.
But whatever they might have done next was interrupted by the arrival of yet two more familiar faces: the two men from the surveillance video who had killed Jessica Kirk. Both were short, and both wore the same yellow shirt-black pants and boots combos that they’d been wearing in the video. One had a bowl haircut like a Beatles cover band reject and the other was a compact Asian man with a decided swagger. Both were smiling as they walked toward Dean, Cas, and the two strange guys.
Both of their eyes were black.
Swagger raised a hand, and both the blonde guy and the tall guy went flying up against the side of the farm house, where they stuck as if held by Velcro. He raised the other hand, an oddly theatrical gesture, and both Dean and Cas were picked up from the ground by an unseen force and tossed into side of the house beside them.
“Vell, vell, vell,” the said Bowl Cut, as Dean struggled to keep his head up. Beside him, Cas’s eyes were clenched as though he were in terrible pain, and his side was still smoking where the bolt of energy had hit it. Both demons were grinning, and Bowl cut took several steps closer. “Vhat have ve here?”