Chapter Text
~*~*~*~*~*~*
But you saw no fault, no cracks in my heart
And you knelt beside my hope torn apart
But the ghosts that we knew will flicker from you
And we'll live a long life
So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
'Cause oh that gave me such a fright
But I will hold as long as you like
Just promise me we'll be alright
~*~*~*~*~*~*
prologue
There’s too much blood.
That fact runs, immutable, through Castiel’s mind as he forces his body forward, into lurching, desperate steps.
Ever since he began hunting, he knew his life was going to end like this: bleeding, running, alone. That knowledge doesn't keep Castiel from trying to survive, even now. He holds his hand to his side in an attempt to keep the blood in, but every breath sends more pumping out of him. His hand is wet and sticky and disturbingly numb. White spots dance at the edges of his vision. His breath tears out of his throat in short, ragged pants. Every time his right foot hits the ground, pain rockets through his body; his right ankle is at least badly sprained, if not broken. But he can’t stop.
If he stops, they’ll catch him.
Terror beats through his blood as he hears the faint sounds of pursuit from behind. He lost count of how many demons were in the graveyard. Five? Ten? Certainly more than he could ever hope to take on by himself. More demons than he’d ever heard of, gathered in one spot, and Castiel was the poor son of a bitch who stumbled upon them.
He’d been an arrogant idiot, walking into a possible demonic hunt armed with nothing more than a container of salt, a half-full flask of holy water, and a recorded exorcism on his phone. All of his supplies were depleted within seconds, and his phone had been cracked beyond help as he’d gotten slammed into the ground. All that was left after that was the pure, animal need for escape. Castiel has never run from a fight, but now he’s fleeing. Five years of hunting, and he’s never been truly afraid for his life until now.
“Where are you, little hunter?”
Their voices call after him, mocking and gleeful. Castiel doesn’t doubt for a second that they know exactly where he is. He’s not exactly stealthy in his retreat. There’s no guile or cunning left in him, only the mindless need to put as much distance between them and him.
“Don’t run far, hunter, we still need you!”
A helpless sob rips from Castiel’s throat. He pours all of himself into his escape, and it’s still not enough.
He’s going to die in this graveyard.
If only he’d listened to Gabriel when his brother told him to wait for backup. If only he’d taken that salt and burn down in Duluth. If only he’d stayed in school instead of following Gabriel’s path. If only. If only.
If only he were anywhere but here, in a tiny, nameless graveyard, choked on fear and running like an animal.
He’d thought he could handle this hunt on his own. Gabriel had thought differently and ordered him to wait. But Castiel had been inflated on his own hubris and more than a little pissed at his brother’s constant mother-henning. Besides, the case had sounded simple on paper: one demon, hardly worth an exorcism.
In his hubris, Castiel delivered himself into the demons’ trap, a perfect victim.
He looks over his shoulder to try and spy out any pursuers. He finds none, until he turns around.
“There you are, little hunter.” A smile twists the woman’s pretty face into something monstrous. Her fingers grab at his shoulders in a vicious claw. Castiel makes a pathetic struggle for freedom, all to no avail. “It was rude of you to leave without saying goodbye.”
“Fuck you,” Castiel pants.
He doesn’t know the meaning of half the sigils the demon carved into his body. He lost count of the shape and design of them halfway through. He knows that they bode nothing good. When they were cut into his flesh, he’d harbored a faint hope of escaping long enough to research them. Now, caught as he is, the only thing he can hope for is to die before the demons have a chance to enact whatever plan they’ve concocted.
The demon's lips turn down in an exaggerated frown. “Very rude.” She drags her fingers over the flayed edges of one of his wounds, drawing a cry of agony out of his throat. “It’s time you came with us.”
“Go back to hell,” Castiel spits, before whispering in a rush, “Omnis espiritus mundi—"
The demon snarls, but she loosens her grip, which is what Castiel wanted. He reels back, and makes for freedom yet again.
Spots fly in front of his eyes. Each breath turns into a struggle as more and more blood flows from his wounds. Survival becomes a distant illusion: beloved and wondrous, but no longer realistic.
“You’ll pay for that,” the demon snarls. Castiel has just enough time to tense before his feet leave the ground. Air rushes by his face, drawing tears from his eyes. His heart rises to his throat. Not even his body is within his control.
I’m sorry, he thinks helplessly. Gabriel… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…
He sees the tree, large and imposing, in front of him just a second before he’s flung headfirst into it.
His skull strikes the trunk with a sick, hollow thunk. Pain explodes from the point of contact, white-hot and consuming. He thinks he might be screaming; he’s not certain. Agony takes him over, until it’s all that he is.
Castiel hits the ground.
There is light, but only for a second. Castiel’s eyes close, shutting out the sight of the stars.
Darkness.
~*~*~*~*~*~*
two months later
Pulling into Bobby’s salvage yard is probably the closest Dean Winchester will ever get to a homecoming. He drives the Impala past the husks of rusting cars, navigating the labyrinth of Bobby’s organized chaos, until he reaches the house. There’s just enough space in front for the Impala, and Dean tries not to feel pleased by that. Tries not to feel like he has a place here.
Bobby’s might be the closest thing he has to a home, but it’s not home. Dean hasn’t had one of those since he was four.
He pushes those thoughts aside as he gets out of the car and shakes out the stiffness of the day’s drive. He’s only twenty-five; he shouldn’t be this sore from doing basically nothing, but hunting takes a toll on the body. He winces as his knee pops, followed by several of his vertebrae shifting back into alignment. At this rate, if he makes it to forty with all his original joints, it’ll be a goddamn miracle.
(At this rate, if he makes it to forty, it’ll be a goddamn miracle.)
He grabs the bottle of Johnny Walker Blue and makes his way to Bobby’s house. He knocks on the door, but barely waits another second before he shouts, “Bobby! You home?”
From inside, he hears rustling and, within short order, Bobby yanks the door open. He looks disgruntled, but Dean thinks he might be hiding a smile in his beard.
“What the hell, boy? At least give me time to get to the damn door,” Bobby grouses, before stepping aside so Dean can enter. As he passes, Dean gets a few rough pats on his shoulder.
“Good to see you,” Bobby says, which is as good as a hug. “You don’t call near as much as you should.”
“Quit your bitching,” Dean mutters, more out of obligation than anything else. He and Bobby have this same fight every time he stops by. Underneath his gruff demeanor, Bobby moonlights as a grandma. Though he’s not exactly wrong. Dean probably could call more. “I brought you a present.”
Dean settles onto Bobby’s couch without being invited, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. Bobby grunts at him, disapproval in every line of his face, but he doesn’t say anything as he settles behind his desk. Dean pours a few fingers for both of them, and passes Bobby his glass.
“You can try and buy your way out, but it ain’t gonna stop me complaining,” Bobby warns, even as he accepts the glass from Dean. “If you’re hunting on your own, you need to call more than once every blue moon. You better put me on speed dial, kid.”
“You know, no one likes a clingy prom date, Bobby,” Dean says, taking a slow swallow. Normally, he favors cheap and potent, but he does have to admit that there’s an appeal to the expensive stuff.
“Uh huh,” Bobby says. Over the rim of his glass, his eyes are watchful. “You heard from your daddy lately?”
Dean tries to hide his flush in another sip. Trust Bobby to fight fire with fire, asking about Dad like he doesn’t know that Dean tries one of John’s numbers at least every other day.
It’s been about a year and a half since John Winchester tossed him the keys to the Impala and said, “Keep her running,” before he took off in his truck. At the time, Dean was stupid enough to see it as a reward. It was only after the first dozen or so unanswered calls that he realized it was a dismissal.
“Nah, he’s busy.” Dean says the words casually, like it doesn’t hurt like hell that his own father didn’t want him around anymore.
First Mom, then Sam, now Dad… The only person who’s bothered sticking around is Bobby, and that’s just because he doesn’t give a good goddamn about much of anything. No doubt, if he put a little effort in, Dean could turn the tried and true Winchester charm on Bobby and have him packing up within a week or so, if he really wanted.
“What about your brother?”
A small curl of anger unwinds in Dean’s chest. Partially at Bobby for asking the question, partially at Sam for being selfish, but mostly at himself for not realizing that he was dead weight all those years ago.
“You know Sammy.” Dean finishes off his drink and pours another as he forces a lightness he doesn't feel into his voice. “He’s off at Stanford, living the college dream. Getting all that California sunshine, far away from the ghoulies and beasties.”
He’d been stupid and drunk enough to call Sam once. From the second Sam picked up, Dean knew it had been a bad idea. In the background were clear noises of a party: the clinking of glasses, laughter, shitty pop music. Someone called for shots.
That was bad enough, the knowledge of mirth outside Dean’s own little self-imposed cocoon of misery, but not as bad as the disinterested kindness of Sam’s voice when he asked how Dean was doing. It reminded him of how people inquired after distant relations, with obligation instead of interest.
Dean mumbled something about how he had to go, and hung up over Sam’s protest. Sam never called back, and Dean never again made the mistake of calling.
Every so often, a gig will take him to the realm of northern California (not that often; apparently, ghosts and monsters have decided that the property values there are too outrageous even for them), and he’ll make a drive past Stanford. It’s not that hard for him to sneak onto the campus. Hell, a co-ed even tried to ask him out once, before Dean made it abundantly clear how uninterested he was.
Sam is a whole head taller than most, and easy to pick out in a crowd. One time, Dean stood hidden behind some masterfully landscaped foliage as his brother passed barely thirty feet away from him, completely unsuspecting.
After each trip, Dean will crawl to the nearest bar and drink away the aching feeling in his heart. It’s an unsustainable sort of hobby, but one he can’t cut out from his life.
“What about you?” Dean settles back into the couch, raising an eyebrow as he looks around the mess of Bobby’s living room. If possible, there are even more books here than the last time he visited, about six months ago. “Was there a yard sale or something?”
Bobby doesn’t bother to look offended. “I don’t hear you complaining when these books manage to save your damn fool ass.”
“Who said I was complaining? Long as I don’t have to organize any of this shit…” Dean’s voice trails off at the look in Bobby’s eyes. “Aw, Bobby, come on! I just got off the road, three salt and burns in a row! Give me a break!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, princess, are you afraid you’re going to break a nail if you do some heavy lifting?” Bobby’s voice is thick with sarcasm. “It ain’t like you have to read any of this. Besides, you wanna stay here rent free and eat me out of house and home, you’d better do something to earn your keep.”
“Whatever,” Dean grumbles. He could fight more, but it’ll end the same way: he’ll still help Bobby organize, except if he bitches, he comes off as an asshole. Little though he might want to admit it, Dean can still acknowledge the fact that he owes Bobby better than that, because the guy’s saved his ass more times than he can count. Not to mention that small thing where he damn near raised Dean and Sam, without a word of complaint. Sometimes, Dean would lie awake at night and wish Bobby could have been their father, instead of Dad. He hated himself for the thought, but there it was, plain as day.
“I’ll organize your damn shelves or whatever. Long as it keeps you from bitching, it’s a win in my book.”
“All right then.” Bobby stands up from his desk. He dumps a pile of books in Dean’s lap, knocking the wind out of him. “You can start with these.”
---
Three hours later, Dean wishes that maybe he’d fought a bit harder.
The work isn’t difficult; it’s just that there’s so much of it, and Bobby is an impossible taskmaster. He doesn’t seem to notice the thousands of books Dean files away properly, according to his archaic and mystifying cataloging rules, but he sure as hell notices when Dean puts one measly scroll in the wrong place.
“What’s the big fucking deal?” Dean finally snaps, massaging at his lower back. There’s a twinge, which can be attributed to bending over all day looking for just the right spot for a particular book, a long car drive, and his job of getting repeatedly smacked around like a damn piñata. “It’s close to where you want it. Ain’t like anyone other than you is going to notice it anyway.”
“I’ll tell you what the big fucking deal is,” Bobby grumps, bumping Dean aside to push the scroll a few millimeters to the left. “The next time you call me with your panties in a bunch, wanting to know the exact way to kill something because you were too damn foolish to look it up beforehand, and I can’t find what I’m looking for because you put it in the wrong spot, that’s the big fucking deal.”
Dean glowers, but doesn’t have a response. Bobby glowers right back at him, and he has the advantage of a pretty prodigious beard as well as a sweat-stained trucker’s cap. Dean looks away first.
“Gotta give you some kind of excitement, old man,” he mutters, by way of apology. Bobby snorts, which is his way of accepting it.
Meanwhile, Dean’s attention is drawn to a shoebox filled with miscellaneous debris. There’s a generic protection hexbag, a few salt rounds, a Zippo lighter, as well as a leather-bound journal and a thick leather cuff.
Dean flips through the journal with a small amount of interest. It’s a standard hunter’s journal, though organized a bit more efficiently than most. Newspaper articles are neatly paperclipped to pages, while theories are scrawled down the page in looping script. The journal is only half-filled. Dean flips it over to see the initials C.N. embossed on the cover.
“Hunter’s journal,” Bobby explains, once he sees the object of Dean’s interest. “Some guy kicked it a few weeks ago near Rawlins, Wyoming. Friend of a friend cleaned out his hotel room, and that stuff found its way to me.”
Dean grunts, not really interested in the explanation. He does, however, pause to look at the cuff. It’s made of thick but pliable leather. Etched into the cuff are protection sigils, only half of which he recognizes. “You mind?” he asks Bobby, shaking the cuff in his direction.
Bobby shrugs. “Not my stuff, don’t care. But if it’s protection you’re looking for, I’d look elsewhere. Obviously didn’t do that poor bastard a lick of good.”
Dean’s firmly of the opinion that, apart from an anti-possession tattoo, protection sigils are worth about as much as the ink they’re composed of, but the cuff is comfortable against his wrist. “What the hell,” he mutters, going back to his task of sorting out the rest of Bobby’s junk. “It’s not like he’s going to mind.”
---
The rest of Dean’s visit passes without remark. He catches up with Bobby, spends a few days making repairs on the Impala, sleeps in a musty bed that’s still better than standard motel fare, and gets to witness the oddly endearing yet still horrifying sight of Bobby flirting with the local sheriff. He leaves Bobby’s place feeling more well-rested than he did when he arrived, which is really all he can ask of life.
He leaves in search of a case in northern Oklahoma. Three citizens in the past two months have died of ‘suspicious head wounds’ and ‘brain trauma.’ It’s enough to spark his interest, and he arrives in town early one morning.
He slips into his monkey suit (he still feels like a third-grader at First Communion every time he wears it) and charms his way into the police station. He even manages to talk his way into possession of autopsy photos and a case file, though having them doesn’t make the case any clearer.
The autopsy photos show that all three victims died of a stab wound. The blade entered into the brain through the soft spot just behind the ear. The coroner noted that the brain trauma was ‘massive,’ but failed to state exactly what that entailed.
Dean’s just about to call Bobby and ask for help, but he pauses. The memory of Bobby complaining about his calls still stings. He knows Bobby meant nothing by it, and would probably be willing to help, but his pride hurts.
He’ll figure this one out by himself.
It means a trip to the local library, where he prays the librarians aren’t nosy. He also prays that the library caters to those with eclectic tastes; what he’s looking for strays pretty far outside the norm of most library canons.
Fortunately, it’s a slow-enough afternoon for him to get a remote corner table to himself, but it’s also busy enough that the librarian doesn’t give him more than a passing glance and a courteous, “Anything I can help you with today?” Once he assures her that he’s fine, she returns to her work, leaving him blissfully alone. He browses the shelves. Surprisingly, there are two books that look like they might help him, and he grabs them before returning to his table.
Dean glances around to make sure there are no children nearby; it wouldn’t do to have the Purity Police called on him because someone couldn’t stop their snot-nosed brat from wandering over. Fortunately, all the children seem engaged elsewhere, which allows him to spread out his photos along the table.
He flips through the books. They don’t seem to have a table of contents, and they certainly don’t have an index. It looks like he’s going to have to look over every single page of these. Of course, they’re both bricks, and weigh as much as one.
He’s barely made it through the first twenty pages before a thin shadow falls over his table. Dean’s hand immediately goes to cover his photos, but there’s too many of them. Besides, he’s already been found out. He looks up, ready to make some excuse, only for his words to wither on the tip of his tongue.
Far from the typical library fare, this man looks… Dean hasn’t exactly made a habit of appreciating the male form, but it doesn’t mean that he hasn’t looked, and this man is enough to turn anyone’s head. He’s dressed casually, though both his jeans and t-shirt do a nice job of hugging his frame. His leather jacket looks buttery soft and gives Dean all sorts of bad ideas. His hair looks wild and messy, and stubble scuffs along his jaw. There’s a faint smudge of dirt along one cheek, but Dean’s attention is drawn to the man’s eyes. They’re hypnotizing, a light blue that almost sparkles in the late afternoon sun.
Dean licks his lips before he realizes he’s staring. “It’s not what it looks like,” he tries. For whatever reason, he really doesn’t want this man to decry him as a freak.
“I’d say so,” the man says. Instead of looking horrified or disgusted at Dean’s reading material, he looks interested. A tiny line appears between his brows as he peers over the photos and books. His hand hovers an inch away from the photos, like he’s thinking of picking one up, but withdraws as he changes his mind. “The placement of the wounds is going to make you think wraith, but I don’t think it is.”
Dean gapes. All of his excuses vanish, obliterated by one improbable sentence. “What?” he manages to get out, rather unintelligently.
The man’s mouth turns down in a small frown. “If you look about halfway through that book,” he points to the book Dean hasn’t bothered to open yet, “you’re going to find a chapter that describes wraiths and the kinds of wounds they leave, and you’re going to think you’re hunting one, but I don’t think you are. I think what you’re looking for is a kitsune, which is a stroke of luck. They’re much easier to kill.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dean tries for self-righteous and lands somewhere in the neighborhood of pathetic.
“Of course. Read up, by all means, don’t trust my opinion, but tomorrow, I would call the medical examiner’s office and ask about the exact nature of the trauma. If they say there was damage to the pituitary gland, then you’re hunting a kitsune.”
Dean mouths unintelligently at the man. “How can I trust you?” he finally asks. “You don’t even… Who the hell are you?”
The man smiles without showing his teeth, a thin, weary-looking thing. “That’s not important.” His gaze falls to one of the pictures near Dean’s hand. For a moment, an expression of profound loss crosses his face, before he composes himself. “Look, I’m not asking for anything in return, and all it’s going to cost you is a few minutes of your time to make that call. And if I’m right, then I’ve saved you a hell of a lot of trouble.”
For a second, the man hesitates and looks as though he’s going to say something else. Dean’s struck suddenly by how exhausted he looks, like it’s taking all of his strength just to remain standing. He doesn’t think the man looked that tired when he first arrived, but to be fair, he was too caught up in his own impressions to pay much attention to the particulars of him. “Good luck,” is all the man says, before he turns on his heel and walks away.
Dean’s so startled by the whole encounter that it takes him a few seconds to move. By the time he gets up from the table and goes to the stacks, the man is long gone. Dean searches through the shelves, but finds no one.
Eventually, he makes his way to the front desk. “Excuse me,” he says to the librarian. She looks up at him with a polite smile. “Did you see someone pass through here a few minutes ago? About this tall, leather jacket, dark hair?” He keeps his description minimal, all too aware of how a bundle of adjectives would love to jump forth. “I think he dropped his phone, and I’d like to return it to him.”
The librarian frowns. “No, I haven’t seen anyone come through here, but if they were quiet, I might not have noticed. If you want, you can leave his phone with me at the front desk, and we can keep it in case he comes looking for it.”
“No, that’s all right,” Dean says, suddenly aware that he doesn’t have a fake phone to give her. “I guess I’ll just keep looking. Thanks!”
The librarian’s frown becomes a little more suspicious and she peers after him as he goes back to his table. He quickly packs everything up, knowing he’s drawn too much attention to himself. Best to get out before she does anything crazy, like call the cops. That’s a whole tangle of worms he’d rather not deal with.
Before he leaves, Dean looks around the stacks. If there’s any secret to be told, they keep it remarkably well.
---
The next morning, he calls the coroner’s office and, as instructed, asks about the exact nature of the brain trauma. When the coroner informs him that all three victims had their pituitary glands damaged, he releases a long breath.
Finally, he breaks down and calls Bobby to ask for everything he knows about kitsune.
“That’s a weird one,” Bobby says. Dean hears the sounds of pages flipping. “Usually they keep to themselves. How’d you guess it anyway?”
Dean bites his lip. While he wants to grab credit, he also doesn’t want to look like the Researcher Extraordinaire, only to fall flat on his face a few weeks later. “I had a tip,” he finally says. “Some other hunter was already in town. He must have been working the same case. He said to check if the victims had damaged pituitary glands, and they did.”
Bobby huffs, like he knows he’s not getting the whole story, but he doesn’t bother to call Dean out on it. “Well, your man was right. Pituitary gland means kitsune; they’re the only thing around that will go for just that. Wraiths get the whole shebang.” He finally finds what he’s looking for. “Kitsune are solitary hunters and mostly nocturnal. Check around old abandoned bridges and tunnels; looks like that’s where they prefer to do the majority of their hunting.”
Dean thanks Bobby and promises to let him know how the hunt went. “And Dean,” Bobby says, just before they hang up, “you run into your tip again, tell him to give me a call. I’d love to pick the brain of someone who can recognize a kitsune right off the bat.”
“Yeah,” Dean says grimly as he hangs up the phone, “so would I.”
---
After that, it’s almost insulting how easily the hunt comes together. Dean spends an uncomfortable few hours skulking underneath the town’s bridge, which is in a neighborhood filled with all sorts of unsavory characters. He sees at least three drug deals go down and several more women leave in cars.
There are thousands of injustices in this world to be corrected, but he’s only there for one.
He finds it in the form of a slender woman who hangs to the edge of the streetlights. She does a decent job playing demure, but Dean can still sense something predatory in her stance and the way she eyes potential johns up and down. He catches her before she can make another kill, slides the knife into her heart, and sees the light leave her eyes. He places her body on the ground as gently as he can, then he hightails it out of there, just in case someone happened to see him.
He calls Bobby to let him know how the hunt went and grabs a few hours’ worth of sleep. In the morning, he checks out of the motel room. With the kitsune dead, there’s no reason to hang around.
He does pause in front of the library. Against his better judgement, he jerks the wheel over to the side and parks. Keeping a watchful eye out for the librarian, he makes his way back to the table he was at the previous day. He picks out a book at random and sits down.
What he’s waiting for, he’s not sure. It’s not as though he expects the man to come striding back to his table and ask him out for dinner (does he?). It would be nice to thank him. If it hadn’t been for the tip, Dean could have easily spent another fruitless couple of days lurking around town until his pride finally broke and he called Bobby. In the span of that time, who knows how many lives could have been lost?
Whatever he’s waiting for, it doesn’t come. Dean reads for two hours and no one ever bothers to disturb him. Eventually, he lays the book aside and takes another look around.
Without even a glimpse of dark hair or blue eyes to be seen, Dean gets up and leaves the library.
~*~*~*~*~*~*