oselle | Fic: In Country, Chapter II, Part Two

In Country, Chapter II, Part Two. All ratings and warnings for the first part of this chapter apply.

II. Michigan Central, Part Two

He heard the basement door open and he hoped it would be Asher but it was Marcus again. He came up to Cass's cell and stooped and pushed a bowl of clam chowder through the slot and followed that with a ginger ale.

"Thank you," Cass said.

"Welcome," the man answered. He had an automated rifle slung over his shoulder. He pulled up the folding chair and slid the rifle off his shoulder and sat down with the gun between his knees and watched Cass eat in silence.

Halfway through the soup, Cass gestured at the gun and said, "I'm not planning a hunger strike."

"What, this?" Marcus laughed. "This ain't for you. There was a pack of wild dogs just across the street, wanted to make sure they didn't get any ideas."

"Wild dogs?"

"Shit yeah. They don't usually come this close but these must've been hungry. You and your friend are lucky you didn't get ambushed on the way in."

"Has it been like that since the army closed off the city?"

"Hell no. There've been packs of dogs running around Detroit for years. All these empty lots, empty houses. It's Wild Kingdom out there."

Cass nodded and went back to his soup and Marcus sat outside and watched him. He wished that the man would go away but he didn't. The only sound was the spoon clicking on the bowl. When Cass pulled the tab on the ginger ale the hiss of escaping air seemed as loud as a geyser going off.

Finally Marcus said, "I ain't given up on you, you know. Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward."

"I'm not a prophet, Marcus."

"Well, you are something."

Cass set the soda can down on the floor and looked at Marcus through the grille.

"I'll tell you what I am. I'm nothing but trouble. If your offer of help is real, and not one of Asher's tricks, then you're putting yourself in danger just coming down here to talk to me. You may have some idea of what Asher is but..." He shook his head. "You can't imagine what he is."

"I ain't afraid of that old bastard."

"You should be."

Marcus leaned forward. "Why?"

Cass stared at him for a moment and then he said, "Because he is a demon. A very old demon, older than Satan. For all I know he may be older than God."

Marcus sat back in the chair and didn't say anything. He sat there for a while and stared at the end of his rifle and then he said, "Well, I figured as much."

"Then you should be afraid of him. He feeds on filth and cruelty and if you're not afraid for yourself then you should at least be afraid for that girl."

"Hey, I wouldn't let nothin happen to her."

"If you tried to help me Asher would think she was part of it."

"I could take her away."

"He would find you."

Marcus grinned slowly. "Not if he was busy lookin for you."

Cass thought about that and almost smiled but then he just looked away and shook his head. Marcus sat up and slung the rifle back on his shoulder and when Cass pushed the bowl out through the slot he bent over and picked it up and said, "Well, I been at you for weeks and I aim to keep at you so I hope you like the sound of my voice," and then he turned to go and his tossed-off words echoed in Cass's ears.

Cass said, "What?"

Marcus looked back over his shoulder, "I said I hope you like the sound of..."

"No...what did you say about weeks?"

"That that's how long I been at you..."

"What are you talking about?"

"What're you talkin about?"

"Weeks...it...today was the first time you came down here."

Marcus turned to face him. "No it wasn't," he said slowly.

"Yes it was. Just a few hours ago, you came down here...you told me about your grandmother. In Alabama, when you were a boy."

Marcus nodded. "Yeah. That was weeks ago. At least two."

Cass got to his feet and came up to the bars and put his hands on them.

"Are you lying to me?"

Marcus shook his head and stared at him and then he said, "I told you how it is here. Sometimes you don't know if you're comin or goin. But I know damn sure today ain't the first time I talked to you."

Time is different in Detroit these days.

I don't care if it takes ten days or ten years.

He felt as if he would faint or vomit and thought his legs would give out but he stayed on his feet and stared at Marcus. Even in those few moments he wondered how much time was passing, had already passed, and when he spoke his voice was so low he could barely hear it himself.

"Do you know where Asher is now?"

Marcus stood under the light of that single bulb and looked down at him, still as a statue in a church.

"I know he ain't here."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Sure as my own name."

"Do you really think you can get out of here with the girl?"

"Hell yes. I been thinkin about it for a long time. We'll go south, where it's warm. Maybe to Alabama. Is Alabama still there?"

"Nothing's like what it was. If you could make it to Kentucky, I have friends there, in the mountains near Mozelle. Tell them you were with Castiel in Detroit. Castiel and Dean."

"Castiel and Dean."

"Marcus," Cass said. "I have to get to the train station."

"I know it."

"You can help me? You're certain?"

"Oh, I am," he said. "I am wise like a serpent and gentle as a dove." A slow smile spread across his face. "Told you I remembered that Word."

* * *

Another two days passed or so it seemed to Cass although he knew by then that two days could be two weeks or two years or some unfathomable and unbearable gulf of time. On the third day Marcus came down to the basement with his dinner and when he had pushed that through the bars he followed it with an MP7 machinegun in a shoulder holster and a pair of bolt cutters and Cass hid them in the trunk. He asked Marcus if he knew of any place in The Cairo where Asher went in private or where he kept his own things and Marcus shook his head.

"I had a knife when I came here, like a hunting knife but bigger, and old, with a bone handle...have you ever seen it?"

"No. If Asher's got it he locked it up tight someplace."

"He had a chain, a silver chain in a box. You've never seen that either?"

"No," Marcus said. "But there's plenty of places in The Cairo I've never been and don't wanna go. You damn lucky he put you down here and not in one of his hidey-holes. Angels must be lookin out for you, boy."

"They must be."

"Angels or not, I still say you shouldn't go up there alone."

"You can't come with me, Marcus."

"I'm not scared."

"I know. But you need to get out of here. Put Detroit as far behind you as you can."

"Hell," Marcus said. "Anybody with any sense did that thirty years ago." He smiled and then he got down on one knee and put his hand through the broken grille. "Give me your hand," he said and Cass knelt down and clasped Marcus's hand between his own.

"I'll be gone after this," Marcus said.

"I know."

"I am gonna say every prayer I know for you. Make sure Tanya says em with me. I'm gonna pray right to my old granny. The devil himself'd be afraid of that woman, she was that formidable. Formidable. She'll be swattin imps right outta your way with that Jesus fan."

Cass laughed but his eyes were wet and he held on tightly to Marcus's rough hand.

"For a long time I thought God had just up and left us. Then I thought maybe there'd never been any God after all and we'd always been on our own. But I knew the minute you come in here that I was wrong and then I knew why God had put me in this place. You are gonna be all right. You are gonna do what God sent you to do."

"I hope so. And I hope I see you again." He smiled. "Dean will like you."

"I'll see you one way or the other. My father's house has many mansions. If I don't see you here I'll see you there."

Cass nodded and put his head down and when he looked up Marcus was in tears.

"Thank you, for everything," Cass said. "Be careful."

"You too," Marcus said. "God bless you." He squeezed Cass's hand and then released him and stood up and he looked down at Cass for another moment and then turned and walked away and out.

* * *

Now he waited. He didn't know if it was day or night or how much time had passed since Marcus had left him but he knew that he must wait. By and by Asher came down and stood outside his cell and told him that Marcus wouldn't be bringing his dinner anymore and Cass asked what had happened to him.

"He's run off. Took that little cunt with him, too."

"Oh," Cass said, and stood there with his heart hammering. He prayed that the demon would not feel the terror coming off him in waves.

"I didn't think he was fucking her," Asher ruminated. "But then I guess everyone was fucking Phyllis. Except you, of course." He paced away and then came back. "You know, I'm not insensitive to your plight. I can find a boy for you...or maybe someone a little older, yeah? Pretty face but a little rough around the edges. Would you like that?"

"No I wouldn't."

"Do you think this faithful abstinence runs both ways?"

Cass shrugged.

"I really don't give a shit."

"Well, I guess that's good," he said, then added, "I saw Dean today."

Cass pressed his lips together. He was sweating.

"You did?"

Asher nodded. "He's fine," he said and watched Cass through narrowed eyes. "They're taking good care of him."

"Good for them."

"Don't you want to know how good?"

Cass came right up to the bars and stared at Asher and said, "The only thing I want to know is when the fuck you're gonna let me out of here so I can do my job and get the fuck out of this shithole city. Understand?"

Asher smiled. "That's good, Cass. That's very good. You keep that up."

When Asher left Cass almost ran for the bolt cutters in the trunk. He forced himself to stay still. In a little while someone came down with dinner. A young man in his twenties, fair-haired and hazel-eyed. God only knew where Asher had found him. He was wearing jeans and a plain black t-shirt and he said his name was Daniel and when he put the food through the slot he left his hand on the tray so that when Cass reached for it their fingers touched and in spite of everything Cass almost laughed at the idea that Asher thought it would be so easy.

"Daniel," he said and Daniel stared at him wide-eyed. He was very pretty. "Tell Asher not tonight."

"What?"

"I know why he sent you down here and you can tell him not tonight. Or not this morning or this afternoon or whatever it is." Then he let his fingers brush the young man's knuckles and he added, "But maybe sometime."

Daniel smiled. He said, "All right."

"All right," Cass said. When he'd eaten Daniel took the tray away and left and Cass went to the back of the cell and got down on his knees and prayed. For himself and for Dean and for all the world. To whomever might be listening. Then he opened the trunk and took out the MP7 in its holster and strapped it on and put his jacket on over it. The long-deceased Eunice gazed up at him from her ancient photo. He picked up the bolt cutters and closed the trunk and went to the door and he pulled up a little slack on the chain and broke it in one hard snap and caught it before it could fall. Then he let himself out of the cell. He walked to the far end of the basement and then turned where Marcus had told him to turn and saw the gutter-level window and the two cinderblocks beneath it that Marcus had left for him. He climbed up and pushed at the window and it rasped on rusty hinges and he pulled himself up and slid out onto his belly. He stood up in a narrow brick alley. The air was bitterly cold and tainted with the smell of metallic smoke. Yellow weeds grew waist-high around him and the ground was covered in trash and broken glass and rusted lengths of wire and iron frozen upright in brown pits of ice.

He had been so long in the darkness of the basement that the light hurt his eyes. He looked up the narrow walls of the alley, past row upon row of blank and broken windows, and saw far above him a sky that was the hard blue of midwinter in that northern country and he knew that it had only been November, and early November at that, when they had reached Detroit and so he had been in The Cairo for months, not weeks. Two months at the least. He wondered if it was somehow still November at the train station, or if it was winter there too, or if it was some other time that was out of time altogether. At the end of the alley the street was white with brittle winter sun and he turned and made for it and so out into Detroit.

* * *

He felt brutally exposed in that icy glare and there was little cover. The streets seemed wholly deserted. A shifting veil of dry snow blew like dust across them and at the corner of Sainte Anne an old iron funnel jutted from the broken sidewalk, still venting the subterranean steam of some departed industry. The street was lined with low clapboard storefronts, some of them crumbling down into the sidewalk, barely any of them still retaining even a pane of glass or any sign of what sort of commerce might have once been conducted in them. Hugging the edge of shadow afforded by those buildings he came to the end of the block and as he paused to scan the cross street some motion caught the corner of his eye and he turned his head and looked into the dark cave of what might have once been a cafe or bar. There was an old man seated on a bentwood chair at one of the tables. He was wearing a suit and a straw fedora and his hands were resting on the table as if he were waiting for someone to come out from the kitchen and set his supper in front of him. A shaft of light fell down through the broken roof and filled the chair opposite the man and dust hung motionless in that light so that it seemed as if some spirit were seated there in deep study of its companion. Cass knew he had seen movement and yet the man was terminally still and so he thought his eyes must have tricked him for this man was nothing but a stiffened corpse. Then the man's hands twitched on the table and he turned his head to the window and looked at Cass. For a moment Cass stood frozen in the man's gaze which was absent of any expression save some bottomless despair. Then the man turned back to the shaft of light and now Cass could see that there was indeed someone or something there in that cafe with him and he turned away and left them both behind.

The next corner gave him his first view of the train station and the tower that rose up above it. Michigan Central, abandoned decades ago and yet left to stand empty, untouched and untouchable. As if awaiting Lucifer's advent. A thing impossible to describe. It had no congruity with the landscape around it, the little derelict houses and weed-tangled lots cowered beneath its sooty hulk and even in that piercing daylight it stood nearly black as if it alone were in shadow. Cass could see right through every window of the tower to the blue sky beyond so that the building looked completely gutted and like no more than a skeleton of stone and steel, and yet it had a hideous life to it, however dark, that was entirely absent from the dead city that lay at its feet.

Between himself and the back of the station sat the old railroad tracks that once fed into the place, raised up on a concrete highline. To approach the station by this route would have made him visible to anyone watching. Beneath the highline ran a tunnel supported by concrete piers and it was so dark that it seemed like there was no tunnel at all, only a black wall impenetrable by any light. Even when Cass was standing right before it he could see no daylight at its end although it could not have been more than fifty yards in length. A fetid smell of wet and rotting garbage came from it. Cass took the gun from its holster and stepped into the tunnel and the darkness swallowed him. The ground beneath his boots was strewn with debris and he had to make his way slowly with his hand against the wall and his eyes wide open in the dark and there was no sound other than the echo of his own steps and breath and yet he knew he was not alone in that place. He felt himself seen and noted but he did not stop and whatever was in there let him pass. When he stepped out of the tunnel he heard something shift behind him and then a sound of vomiting, pained and horrible and echoing upon itself in the blackness but he didn't turn around.

He couldn't have been in the tunnel more than a few minutes but outside the light had already changed into the low and oppressive slant of late winter afternoon. Now the tower loomed up above him and he could see the arched rear windows of the train station and the peak of its gabled roof. There was not a sound, not even a sigh of wind. Here the chain-link fence was broken and he climbed through it and then found a gap in the old boards set up to barricade the station and he slipped between them and inside.

He found himself on a crumbling ramp that led down to the station's main arcade. The great vault soared above him and the granite columns stood silent in their decay, covered in runic graffiti. The floor was drifted with snow and the day's last light fell through the high windows and tattooed a skeletal grid upon the white snow and the gray stone. There was no sign of occupancy, natural or unnatural, and he had no idea where he was supposed to go. A sudden terrible thought came to him that Lucifer was not here, that Dean was not here, that no one was here at all and that he had erred terribly in escaping from The Cairo. That he had after all behaved exactly as Asher had said he would and given no thought to anything except Dean and now he was alone in this alien place with no plan and no help, a fool deserving of whatever may come.

He descended the ramp and stepped out into the arcade. The blank ticket windows gaped at him. The light at the windows grew dimmer and the shadows inside the station deepened and then some form slipped out from behind a heap of rubble and stood there watching him. It looked more hyena than dog, with a humped back and long pointed snout. It bared white teeth at him in silence. Cass shifted the gun in his hands and from across the arcade he could hear the dog begin to growl deep in its throat and then it suddenly tucked its bullet head between its shoulders and whined and slunk off into the shadows and Cass knew it had not retreated from him. He stood still for a moment and held his breath and when he turned Lucifer was behind him.

"Thank you for helping me win a bet. I told Asmodeus you'd show."

He had not laid eyes on Sam since long before Lucifer had taken him and he saw no change in him at all. He stood a few feet away in the dim twilight with his hands in the pockets of his jeans and his blue shirt open at the neck, not dressed for the cold and not needing to be dressed for it, at ease as if he had just run into an old friend in his own front yard.

"He said you wouldn't but I always knew you had a thing for Dean." He shook his head and smiled. "Everyone had a thing for Dean. He's a charming sonofabitch when he wants to be, isn't he? That four months he was in hell were kind of a nice break for Sam. Not having that charming, pretty sonofabitch around all the time."

"You're not Sam. You don't speak for him."

"But I am Sam," he said. "And Sam is me. We are one. But anyway..." He gestured at the gun. "Would you like to shoot me?" He held out his arms. "Please, go ahead. Get it out of your system."

"Not with this gun."

"Oh right," he said. "Maybe with this gun." He reached behind himself as Dean would have done and pulled the Colt out from the back of his belt. Then he held it up to his temple and shot himself in the head. The shot boomed like an explosion in that vault and the echo was a long time dying. The walls were still ringing with it when Lucifer said, "Nope, not that one either." There wasn't a mark on him and he threw the gun down to the ground where it clattered like a toy. Then suddenly he was holding the MP7 and Cass was standing there empty handed and he took one stumbling step backward, certain he would be shot but Lucifer only turned the gun over in his hands and examined it.

"This is very nice," Lucifer said. "German? Of course. You can always tell." Then the gun was gone and Lucifer rubbed his hands together and raised his eyebrows and looked up at the lofty ceiling. "What do you think of Michigan Central? It's a piece of work, isn't it? Can you imagine they just left all this here to rot?"

"I'm not here for the architecture."

"Of course not. You're here to see my brother."

"I'm here for Dean."

"Same thing," he said and then, "Cass, don't you at least want to try and kill me? You were a fucking angel, man, this is your job." Cass didn't say anything and Lucifer smiled and shook his head. "That charming sonofabitch. Ah well, let's go see him."

* * *

The windows on the top floor afforded a wide vista of the city now sinking into night. The last of the sun lay as a bloodred strip on the western horizon and the sky above it was purple edging to black. There were no lights in the city except fires burning for someone's warmth or just burning on their own. To the north at the river's edge stood the charred and blackened shell of the Renaissance Center, still sending a column of smoke up into the air.

"That ugly piece of shit," Lucifer said. "I burned it myself. Renaissance my ass."

"Where is Dean?"

"Don't worry. He's on his way."

They were in an empty ballroom on the highest floor of the tower. It looked as new as if no one had ever set foot in it before and it was quiet and smelled of fresh floorwax. The walls were corniced in gilt. Electric chandeliers glowed from the ceiling and were twinned in the glossy parquet beneath. The gallery wall of cathedral windows was all glassed and bordered with an ornate brass rail. None of this had been visible from the outside. Whether it even existed within the actual walls of Michigan Central could not be proven with any authority but it seemed to exist there and the seeming was the only reality left. They had not come up by any elevator or stairs, they had been one second in the rotting arcade of the train station and the next here and Lucifer stood beside Cass with his hands in his pockets and looked down at his city.

"You know they blame the niggers for what happened to Detroit," he said thoughtfully. "So do I. But to me all men are niggers." He smiled and shook his head. "I wish I'd known that word when God first made man. I would have said, 'Lord, are you really going to turn the world over to these niggers?' I pretty much did say that, but more eloquently. Nigger wasn't part of my vocabulary yet. It took a race of niggers to come up with a word that ugly, which is of course why it's the only one that fits. How do you think God feels about what his niggers have done to the world?"

He swept his hand out in a motion that encompassed the city and at the same time seemed to dismiss it as if with only one more gesture he could wipe it out of existence.

"I came to Detroit because Detroit is everything I told God the world would be if he let the niggers have it. They raped this city. They raped the earth beneath it and the sky above it and the waters around it. They raped it and shit and pissed on it and burned it and then left it to die. Then they built a few glass towers and called it a renaissance. That's always the way with niggers, destroy everything they put their filthy hands on and then cover it up with some cheap glitz and reward themselves for it.

"I came up through River Rouge on my way here, now there's a place to see. The greatest factory in the world was built there by one of the world's greatest niggers, the one who finally figured out how to turn men into machines. And they loved it. They sent artists in to paint pictures of it, as if the hell on earth he'd created were itself a work of art. Damn. I wish I could've seen that with my own eyes but I was under lock and key back then. You know Cass, that was the worst thing about being in prison. Never being able to tell God, I told you so." He grinned. "And now I don't even need to say it." He jerked his head at the window, at the smoldering ruins of Detroit. "God can see it for himself."

"Lucifer," Cass said. "This apocalypse is yours."

"This apocalypse began long before Sam Winchester let me out and you know it, and all the angels know it and God knows it."

"And the virus?"

Lucifer shrugged. "That just helped speed things up. It was a neat trick, wasn't it? But I didn't barricade the cities. I didn't send out the soldiers to round people up and burn them alive, healthy and sick alike. I didn't take to the roads raping and stealing and butchering whoever I came across." He took a deep breath and sighed it out. "I am so happy to be here to see the end of God's world. I will be the last one left. I will be the one to turn out the lights."

Cass stood there in silence. He stared at Lucifer, at Sam. Finally he repeated, "Where is Dean?"

Lucifer smiled, still looking out the window. "There's still some angel left in you, Castiel. That infinite patience."

"Where is he?"

"He's here."

"You said we were going to see him."

Lucifer looked at him. "Why do you want to see him? What do you think that will do?"

"I want you to let him go."

"Let him go?"

"Yes. You don't need him. You said it yourself, you'll be the last one left. The world will die all on its own."

"And you don't care about that?"

"No," Cass said. "I don't."

"My goodness," Lucifer said softly. "How you've fallen. Was he worth it?"

"Yes. He is."

Lucifer nodded. His reflection nodded in the windowglass.

"Sam loved him too. Sam still loves him. He hated him because he didn't want to love him. He wanted to be his own man. He was happy when Dean was gone and he was so ashamed of that. The one you called Ruby was one smart bitch. She got to him through his shame, not his grief. When Dean came back, she was delighted. Sam could barely live with himself and she made him feel like he had nothing to be ashamed of, and every reason to take raise himself up with pride. I only finished what she started. It was so easy.

"I'd like to tell you that Dean is free to go but he isn't. It makes Sam suffer horribly to see his brother here and to understand at last how much he loves him. I enjoy that. And to be honest, I don't think Dean would leave. All this time, I haven't restrained him in any way and yet he's still here. He thinks he's helping Sam by being here and I let him think that. He wants to be with his brother, Cass. If you love him you'll leave him here. I won't hold you. I have no argument with you and you have no power against me. You can go. I'll escort you out of the city myself if you like and after that..." He smiled. "Go where thou wilst."

"No," Cass said. "I want to see him for myself."

"You think I'm lying to you?"

"Yes."

Lucifer looked down at him out of Sam's eyes.

"All right," he said. He began to walk away and Cass followed him and he stopped and looked over his shoulder. "You stay here." He turned and crossed the ballroom and went out the door and closed it behind him and Cass was left alone and in silence at the top of Michigan Central. Beyond the window the remains of Detroit consumed themselves in the night. Beyond that the whole world did the same.

* * *

He seemed to wait there for hours but there was no trace of dawn in the sky. Neither did he see any moon or stars. In all this time no one came. He tried the door but it was locked as he'd known it would be. There was no other way out of the room except the windows and it was eighteen stories to the ground and Castiel had been winged but Cass was not.

He stood beside the door with his head back against the wall and his eyes fixed on the plastered ceiling and listened for footsteps but heard nothing. He understood that Dean might not come. That Lucifer might not come, that it could very well be that no one would come and he would remain in that room alone for all eternity while that night went on forever. He stood there and thought about everything Lucifer had said and knew at last that there would be no saving of this world. All illusion of that was stripped away. He didn't care if he died but he could not bear the thought of dying without seeing Dean again. Without trying to free him from this place, however he could do that. He remembered what they had promised to each other but now that he had come to it he knew that he would give himself up if doing so would save Dean. He felt himself back in hell and only Dean still stood out clearly, one last ember in the endless night.

He heard his name and looked down from the ceiling and Dean was at the other end of the room. He was standing by the windows with his hand on the brass rail. He was not wearing the same clothes that Cass had last seen him in.

"Dean?"

"Yeah."

"Is it really you?"

"Do you mean is there something else in here with me? No."

"How do I know that?"

"You can exorcise me, Cass. Do whatever you want. Here..."

He took a piece of red chalk from the pocket of his shirt and drew a messy but accurate devil's trap on the floor. Cass stood there and watched him. Dean stood up and stepped into the trap and turned around in it and held his arms out and then stepped out.

"See?"

Cass stood there for another moment and then he crossed the room nearly at a run but when he reached Dean, Dean held his arm out and put his palm flat against his chest and said, "What are you doing here, Cass?"

Cass stared at him. "What do you mean? I came for you."

Dean shook his head. "You shouldn't have. You weren't supposed to."

"What?"

"You weren't supposed to," he repeated. "I haven't done it," he said quietly. "I don't think I can. Sam is in there but I can't help him. I can see him, Cass. Just a glimpse, now and then but I see him. He's in there. He's been in there all this time. But I can't...I can't get him out."

"Then come with me. Lucifer said I could go, he practically said you could go too, if you wanted. He doesn't need either one of us."

Dean smiled sadly and shook his head.

"I'm not leaving him again. I'm sorry, Cass."

"You're making it worse for him. Lucifer told me that's the only reason he wants you to stay, to make Sam suffer."

"No. I have to stay. I have to find a way to help him. I didn't help him before. I did this to him."

"He did it to himself!" Cass nearly shouted and Dean flinched and Cass said, "Dean...Dean, please..." and he reached up and tried to take Dean's face in his hands and Dean turned away and then Cass saw that his hair had begun to turn all gray along his temples and above his ears and he said, "My God...how long have you been here?"

Dean looked at him. "I don't know. A long time."

"What are they doing to you?"

"Nothing."

"Look at me," he said and grabbed Dean's arm but Dean pulled away.

"They aren't doing anything to me. I'm just...here, that's all." He looked at Cass and Cass stared into him and Dean turned away and put a hand to his head. "Stop that." His voice was shaking. "For Christ's sake, stop it. You're not an angel anymore, you can't trust the shit you see anyway."

"You're going to die in here."

Dean laughed and looked up at the ceiling.

"I wish."

Cass stood there and for a moment neither of them moved or said anything. Then Cass came to Dean and Dean didn't move and Cass got down on his knees and put his arms around Dean's waist and Dean stiffened up but Cass wouldn't let him go. He laid his cheek against Dean's stomach. He could feel Dean's ribs through his clothes. At last Dean put his hands on Cass's head and Cass tightened his arms.

"You told me I had to end it," Dean said. "But I can't. The only thing I can do is stay here."

"Then I'm staying with you."

"No you aren't."

"In all thy ways, Dean," Cass said. "I promised you."

"He'll give his angels charge," Dean said. "You aren't an angel. You can go now, Cass. I'm letting you go."

"You can't do that. I won't go."

"Yes you will."

"No..." Cass said. He shook his head. Now he was crying.

"Go back to Amy. Or look for Frank. Find someplace to be safe until it's all over. Maybe I can...maybe I can still do something."

Cass looked up at Dean.

"The chain...Lucifer's chain, I can..." But Dean clamped a hand over Cass's mouth and shook his head.

"It's useless. He's in there, nice and snug. He's in my brother."

"Dean, please..." Cass said and then he heard the door open behind him and he thought, No, no no, not yet... and when he turned his head Lucifer was there. Asher was beside him. Asher's eyes settled on him for just one moment with such black contempt that Cass felt as if he could go mad from it and then Asher looked away and did not look at him again.

"This is a touching scene," Lucifer said. "But it's time for you to go."

He loosened his arms and Dean stepped away and Cass stood up and said, "No."

Lucifer crossed the room and looked at Dean.

"Dean, what do you want me to do with him?"

"Let him go. Give him a weapon and ammo and take him out of the city and then let him go. He'll be all right."

"Dean, no." He looked at Lucifer. "I'm not leaving."

"You heard my brother," Lucifer said. "He wants you to go, Cass. I know you have this...schoolboy crush on him, but can't you be a little dignified about this?"

From the doorway Asher snorted. "A stiff prick has no dignity."

"Oh," Lucifer said amiably. "Do you want to fuck him? Because by all means, have a farewell fuck but then really, you've got to go." He shoved Cass at Dean and he stumbled and Dean caught him. "Fuck him," Lucifer said. "And then get the fuck out of here."

Dean held Cass by the arms for a moment and looked into his eyes and shook his head and then pushed him away gently.

"Just let him go, Sam."

"No," Asher said suddenly. "You let him go he'll just come back here sniffing around like a fuckin tomcat. You gotta teach him a lesson."

Lucifer looked at Asher. He looked at Cass. Dean said, "Sam, don't..." but it was too late. Lucifer had seized Cass so quickly that he didn't know what had happened but he found himself on his back staring up at the ceiling and Lucifer was holding him up with both legs under one arm and with the other hand he was pulling off Cass's boots and socks and Dean shouted, "Sam, no!" and Lucifer held up his hand and Dean was hurled across the room. Cass thought he'd be thrown through the window but he struck the brass bar hard enough to shake it from end to end and his head snapped back and hit the glass and starred it and he fell to the floor stunned.

"Asmodeus, what do you have for me?" Lucifer said and Asher stepped up and pulled from beneath his jacket something like a policeman's billyclub but shorter, a blackjack, wrapped in leather and he hefted it in his two hands and was ready to swing when Lucifer stopped him. He took the blackjack from Asher and turned to Dean and held it out.

"You do it."

Dean blinked. "No."

"If Asher does it your friend will crawl out of here a cripple for the rest of his life. That's how he'll go out into the streets of Detroit. So I suggest you do it. Get up."

Dean looked at Cass and then pushed himself up to knees and then to his feet. He crossed the room and took the club from Lucifer and held it in his hand and looked at it. Then he looked at Cass and Cass lay there and stared up at him and God. Dear God, how he loved him.

"It's all right, Dean."

"I'm sorry."

"I know. It's all right."

"I'm so sorry," he said and then he raised the club and swung it and hit the soles of Cass's feet. The pain was beyond belief. His vision blurred and he heard himself shout but barely knew his own voice. Everything from his feet to his bowels seized up in pain. He thought he'd piss or shit himself or already had. And yet he knew that Dean had held back. Had held back tremendously.

"One more," Lucifer said.

"You son of a bitch."

"One more or Asher does it."

Cass's eyes were streaming with pain. He clenched them shut against the next blow and when it came he mercifully grayed out for a brief moment and then came back to himself in agony. Lucifer dropped his legs and his heels thudded on the floor. Pain like an electric shock. Then Dean was down on his knees at Cass's feet, putting on his socks and then his boots. Shaking, he pushed himself up on his elbows as Dean was tying the laces and before he could finish Asher hauled him to his feet. He could barely stand. Dean pulled him away from Asher and got his shoulder under one arm.

"You all right?" Dean whispered. "You all right?"

Cass nodded and closed his eyes and when he opened them they were back in the train station's deserted hall. Himself and Dean and Lucifer. Icy moonlight streamed through the broken windows.

"Take him outside," Lucifer said.

"I asked for a weapon and ammo," Dean said. "You said you'd take him to the city limits."

"Fuck it. I changed my mind. He was pissing me off. Now get him the fuck outta here before I really fuck him up."

Dean looked at Cass. His face so pale in the moonlight.

"Can you walk?" he asked and Cass nodded and together they went out of the train station through the front entrance and into the street. Outside it was even colder than before. The wind had risen up off the river. Frozen snow crunched under them.

"Leave him there," Lucifer called from the doorway. Dean turned around to look at Lucifer and Cass turned also and Lucifer threw something at them and it thudded to the ground at their feet. The MP7 machinegun. "There," he said. "That'll do for him."

Dean bent over and picked up the gun and pressed it into Cass's arms. Cass clung to Dean's shirt with both hands.

"Dean, Dean please...please..."

"You have to go," Dean said. Tears were standing in his eyes.

"No...the chain...there's still the chain..."

"It's too late," Dean said. "Go to Amy. Tell her I fucked up and hide. Lay low. Maybe somehow you'll make it."

"Dean..."

"I'm sorry, Cass," he said and then kissed him. Cass twisted his hands in Dean's shirt and with the MP7 shoved up between their ribs and bruising both of them they kissed.

Lucifer said, "Dean." Sharply. Like calling in a dog.

Dean pulled away and bent his head. The gun nearly fell and he caught it and put it in Cass's hands and closed his fingers around it.

"Go," he said and he turned away and he was gone. Lucifer gone with him.

Cass stood there in the cold light. A cloud passed over the moon and the front of the train station went dark and illumined again.

"No..." Cass said. His breath steamed out before him. "No."

He ran across the snow and into the train station. The arcade was empty, ghostly in the moonlight.

He shouted, "Dean!" and ran into the center of the hall. "Dean!"

There was no answer. No one there. He stumbled around the perimeter of the hall and tried to find some way up into the tower but there was none. He shouted for Dean in the cold until from somewhere inside the station a dog barked. Then another. They came out of the shadows like shadows themselves with their teeth bared and their tongues lolling and he shot them. The shots stuttered like lightning and rang out deafening and the dogs who weren't shot ran off yelping into the darkness and Cass shouted for Dean and then fell to his knees with his arms over his head and howled Dean's name and in response from outside came a great uproar of dogs or hyenas or whatever beasts prowled the decayed streets of that haunted city and the anguished cries of all rose up as one into the night.

Continued in Chapter III: River Rouge

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

laurie-ky.livejournal.com

So desolate. That train station is like a hollow hill or something from the Fey, the way it shifts and changes and time is weird. Cas is holding onto Dean, who is holding onto Sam, trying to pull him from Lucifer. And you know, I really can't say what you're going to do as a writer. I'd like to hope Cas can work that mircle, but right now I'm feeling about as lost as Cas and Dean.

Laurie

From:

Fic: In Country, Chapter II, Part Two

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