spnfic: it's the stars that lie, 5/12

Title: It's the Stars that Lie, 5/12
Author: Seperis
Series: Down to Agincourt, Book 2
Codes: Dean/Castiel
Rating: R
Summary: We fight, we lose, everyone dies anyway, I know. However, I don’t see why, if we're going to fight anyway, we shouldn't believe we're going to win.
Author Notes: Thanks to nrrrdygrrrl and obscureraison for beta services, with advice from lillian13, scynneh, and norabombay.
Thanks to bratfarrar for the series name and summary from her sonnet Harry Takes the Field.
Spoilers: Seasons 5, 6, and 7

Series Links:
AO3 - Down to Agincourt
Book 1: Map of the World

Story Links:
AO3 - All, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5
DW - Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4




--Day 87--

When Dean wakes up the next morning in a quiet, empty cabin, no babysitter in sight--or in the living room or kitchen (or bathroom, hiding in the shower, ready to pounce holding Cas's goddamn permitted activity list and wearing Cas's most disappointed expression)--it hits him all at once; he's actually getting better.

After taking a quick shower (no one hovering nervously outside the bathroom door, assuming silence means concussion and darting in to rescue him from the harmless spray of lukewarm water) and getting dressed (no one listening worriedly at the bedroom door, assuming any and every sound is Dean tripping to his death and rushing in to save him from his pants), he makes what turns out to be an epic journey to the kitchen where breakfast is waiting patiently on the table (no one watching sharply for him to choke to death at every protracted swallow, Heimlich-maneuver-enabled for deployment at the first muffled cough) and stares at the well-balance meal waiting for him on the table, already so tired he kind of wants to sit on the floor, eating optional.

So right: he might be getting better, but the absence of observers is pretty much the only thing that's actually changed. Vera warned him about this part.

"Now the bad news. You're not gonna feel any different for a while. You're gonna be exhausted, you're still gonna have to remember to eat until your body remembers how to transmit hunger, and the occasional nausea isn't going away. That's gonna take time, Dean, not gonna lie to you, but it will happen. It's just gonna be slow."

Falling gratefully into the kitchen chair, Dean picks up the cup of coffee and lets sweet, sweet caffeine wash through him before surveying the bowl of oatmeal--staple of apocalyptic living everywhere--short stack of toast, and a bowl of canned fruit without enthusiasm before reminding himself that eventually, he'll remember what it feels like to be hungry, but until then, he'll just have to fake it. He doesn’t need to be told this is the ideal of breakfast nutrition (at least from what's available at Chitaqua), because Cas actually both reads and believes what they write on the goddamn cans. And asks Vera in horrifying detail how to get all the nutrition possible stuffed into Dean.

Sourly, he surveys the multivitamin and glass of water that Vera and Cas seem to think is supposed to be dessert and thinks how proud Sam would be. He's gonna be drinking lattes and listening to shitty Indie music next, he can feel it.

Reaching for his spoon, he grimly sets himself to get through this, pulling over one of the maps he and Cas were reviewing a couple of days ago and Cas left on the table with several reports for his breakfast entertainment. Cas's second act as Dean's proxy in Chitaqua--right after the Mowing of the Goddamn Lawn--was to split Kansas into four working patrol districts in addition to the local patrol for Chitaqua, which satisfied both the unsurprising re-emergence of Cas's anal-retentive nature (when applied to things not related to sex, drugs, and maps) and Dean's feeling that this is gonna work really well up until they actually have something to fight. If the holes in reality are actually turning out to be some kind of supernatural-repellant, that may actually be the defining example of the concept of irony.

The animals are definitely coming back, however; squirrel and raccoon last month, from what shows up in the mess (thank God he's not eating anything from there anymore), and the last check of Wichita revealed a rat renaissance in progress, which reminds him to tell Cas rat is not and will never be food and make that a goddamn order. Between determined spoonfuls of oatmeal so unbelievably bland (though sweet; Cas learned his sugar lesson well) that he has to check and make sure he's not just imagining he's actually eating, he starts to wonder if they were wrong about why the supernatural population took a nosedive and hasn't resurfaced yet.

Reaching across the table, he pulls the other map of Kansas closer and studies the lumps of tiny white stickers that cover Kansas City, Topeka, Overland Park, and Wichita almost entirely and are absent from anywhere else in the state. After Dean was out of danger, Cas resumed his observations of the holes with Joe in attendance and under strict orders to shoot Cas in the ass if he did anything sketchy, which Dean assumes is why he was subjected to an hour long extempore speech on the meaning of holes both physical and philosophical throughout history and realized how very, very close Cas was to getting Vera's gun up his ass before Cas was put on landscaping and home improvement detail.

Cas also confirmed--as much as he could for something he'd never seen and never thought possible--that at the current rate of decay, it would be two years before they degraded to less than fifty percent and could be presumed dangerous. The brief meeting with the team leaders (sans Sid) to finally tell them about this new Apocalyptic development went way better than he or Cas expected, which he attributes to the 'will it kill us now?' school of thought: so few thing in a hunter's life can answer that question with a 'no' that it's kind of exciting when it actually happens.

Apocalypses, he reflects thoughtfully, really changes your standards for optimism. Sure, they have no idea how to deal with it when it becomes (potentially) lethal and oh God, what then, but it's a really nice thought that the world might survive long enough to worry about it.

Turning his attention back to the map, he pulls a few of the reports from the second state survey closer, skimming the first page of Cas's twenty-two page summary (because, Cas). All of the communities they successfully made contact with (read: those that didn't shoot at them) reported the same thing; they're living in a monster-free Apocalyptic utopia in which their only worries are food, water, shelter, and the border guards' addiction to snorting diamonds or something, which is the only explanation for a thousand percent markup on such luxury items as aspirin and seeds for the backyard vegetable garden. It doesn't make sense, though. That happening on the day of Lucifer almost but not quite winning makes sense if every threat to humanity out there was able to sense what happened that night (and weren't friends with Lucifer, which surprisingly is more common than you'd think), but they're closing on three months and the only representatives of the non-human forces arrayed against them are brownies, which only proves that brownies are stupid vicious fuckers.

Joe's contacts at the borders weren't able to tell them much on that score (there isn't, as it turns out, a national supernatural tracking program in place, which really makes him wonder what the government thinks is actually happening these days), but what little he managed to get suggested that Kansas may be the only place this is happening, which means the hole in reality as supernatural repellant theory is out the window.

Dean gets a second cup of coffee to brace himself for the canned fruit course, flipping back to the neatly sectioned Kansas map and concentrating on how to balance regular team rotations between districts with scheduled downtime. Cas's updated list of the current population of Chitaqua came with notations on skills, limited personal history, and duties both former and current, because Cas (and very subtle asterisks by certain feminine names which yeah, Dean counted because historical alternate universe of yourself trainwrecks are like that).

Currently they have seven teams--not including Sid's, which consists of Rob, currently assigned to extremely vital mess duties to temporarily hide the fact that Sid's not getting another goddamn team until Dean's sure they'll survive him, which will be never--but the problem in getting two more out there isn't just keeping the camp running. While everyone in Chitaqua can fight, leadership isn't a skillset most of them seem to have and Cas's pick of Alicia and Mark may be the last two who could be trained into it. Not to mention if the deal goes through with the communities, Vera's team will need a replacement for Amanda, and Mark's will need a new leader to take over civilian training efforts, and probably a couple of other people to help them out, which hey, delegation works, he'll let them pick who they want.

Dean locates the list from the pile of papers on the other kitchen chair to get through the two pieces of toast (spread with maybe-butter, maybe-not, didn't ask, don't want to know) and a multivitamin large enough to substitute for a .22 if they ever run out of bullets before surveying the detritus in satisfaction (he's learned to appreciate the value of celebrating each small step forward to a greater goal). Though he's gotta admit, he's not sure the number of steps between 'successfully finishing breakfast' and 'defeating Lucifer' can actually be counted without a computer and a couple of months of calculations to discover a brand new number to express it.

Sitting back, Dean wonders uneasily if he just made a shitty math joke. It really is a whole new world.

Leaving the dishes for his first check-in to deal with--he's exercising his still-recovering-from-near-death privileges when it comes to household chores--he picks up the maps and reports to carry to the living room, spreading them out on the coffee table in a way that suggests he's actually doing something before collapsing on the couch with a sigh of relief.

One and a half hours on his own, and he's not dead yet; it's celebration time. When he gets the energy to sit up, which will be any minute now.

Reaching up, he lazily confirms that shaving is definitely on the morning agenda. Cas hasn't replaced the mirror in the bathroom, but Alicia contributed a small hand mirror that, braced against the lamp in the bedroom, fulfills the criteria of less in the way of having to stand up and an extremely limited view while he gets the business over and done with, with the added advantage of Dean adding speed-shaving to his skillset with by now an excellent record in regard to a lack of bleeding.

Giving the stacks of reports, maps, and the first two of Cas' now six-volume What Dean Needs to Know Series (first edition, spiral binding), he stretches out on the couch and closes his eyes before reaching out, letting fate decide his first order of business.

---

Dean wakes up with a start, blinking vaguely at the ceiling until his mind clears up enough to orient himself to the here and now.

It's still unsettling, waking up in a cloudy haze of uncertainty on where he is and what he's doing; his life to date hadn't been forgiving of post-sleep disorientation, and his body, barring extraordinary injury or supernatural related reasons, has never failed him. Taking a calming breath, then another, he forces himself not to fight it, letting everything come together in its own time. Progress is made up of small steps, and he knows it's getting faster, getting easier every day, and that his own instinctive panic is probably officially a factor at this point, but that doesn't help those first few seconds, few minutes, when he can't think enough to remember that.

It's gonna take time, he reminds himself bitterly, rubbing his eyes before looking at the living room ceiling and letting himself, just for a second, resent how little control he has over anything right now, even his own goddamn body. He's finding it dangerously easy to understand why Cas hates human bodies; this shit is ridiculous.

Squinting toward the nearest window, Dean measures the quality of grey light and realizes it's probably noon, and his first morning on his own was, like every other goddamn morning since the fever, lost to sleep. Pushing off the blanket, he pauses, frowning; while the weather is still doing variations of 'chilly' and 'clammy' with an option to 'kind of cold' come nightfall, he doesn't remember getting a blanket this morning.

A faint sound from the kitchen brings him upright, swinging his legs to the floor before he thinks better of it, and he swallows as black spots dance before his eyes because he also forgot that getting up like a normal goddamn person is something he still can't do. Digging his fingers into the arm of the couch, he gets his vision back in time to see Cas watching him worriedly from the kitchen doorway and promptly forgets he hates everything right now.

"Cas?" Progress means that he doesn't see Cas before dinner these days unless he wakes up at the ass-edge of dawn, which he doesn't, ever. Which really makes him wonder about the benefits of progress sometimes.

"According to your current schedule," Cas says, like he's reading it right now, "it's time for lunch."

"I thought Chuck…" He cuts himself off, grinning at Cas's raised eyebrow. Far be it from him to protest Cas wanting to come home for lunch instead of leaving it in the refrigerator carefully wrapped and labeled on the off chance Dean mistakes the other three occupants of the refrigerator--that being bottles of Joe Beer--as his midday meal, and it's not like he's hasn't been tempted. "Not complaining. What're we having?"

"Chicken soup," Cas answers solemnly, turning to go back to the stove, where Dean, craning his neck, sees a pot is currently stationed, blue gas flames flickering beneath it. Getting up--more slowly this time--he makes his way to the table after a quick check to verify that it's recognizable as soup, since Cas's first (and second) interpretations of soup sometimes appeared in the form of a solid, semi-gelatinous mass and lesson fucking learned. This looks very edible, however, and since chicken is actually in it, definitely a member of the canned food family. "Vera gave me a list of appropriate items that were currently available in supply and I abused my authority to acquire most of it and bring it here. Not that anyone would protest your return to good health, of course," he adds. "But it would be cruel to force them to resist temptation. Especially since Penn refuses to tell anyone what is in this week's stew."

Dean glances at the empty crate by the no longer empty pantry, the door open enough to note it's scrupulously clean and filled with a lack of variety of canned and jarred food that's been verified he can keep down and subject to Cas's continuing search for the most efficient method of organization. Idly, he wonders if they're back to alphabetical by size or if Cas went for a color-based theme; it wouldn't be the weirdest he's tried. He has fond memories of last week when Cas tried to explain using several diagrams and a lecture on the origin of non-Euclidean geometry. The upshot is that he's now justified in sleeping through that class in three schools during junior year; the downside is, if he was given the final now, he'd probably pass it on the first try, which just confirms that one, this is the stupidest Apocalypse he's ever heard of, and two, he may not actually hate geometry.

A whole new world, Dean muses. One where geometry makes sense.

"What's in the stew?"

Cas hesitates. "She mentioned that she'll making boots out of the skin."

Dean tries and fails to convince himself fur will be involved. "At this rate, cannibalism may start looking good pretty soon."

"There's always the MRE's," Cas offers, then visibly shudders before turning off the stove. "Sit down while I set the table."

Dean hides his grin as Cas methodically collects two bowls, two glasses, and two spoons from the cabinets, origin Supply Run for Kitchen Shit he assumes, and one day he's got to find that report. Vera maliciously explained everything there was to know about human meal customs when Cas took over as chef in residence, and Dean's pre-fever days of eating on the porch or on the coffee table came to an abrupt end in the post-tray, post-fever world.

He doesn't regret it, though, not after a few days of watching Cas's almost ritual adherence to setting out dishes and flatware in precise formations before the addition of food and people to eat it. It reminds him of the way Cas cleans his guns and organizes his armory, the way he's started to fold each piece of clothing after he does laundry before putting it away and continuing adventures in organizing the pantry, the way he took to Dean's insistence on a routine that's since been expanded to all of Chitaqua because Cas learned the meaning of a schedule and found it awesome and everyone else should too or die trying.

Some things couldn't be taught, Cas told him; observation and repetition had to do the heavy lifting when it came to food and sleep and maintaining his body when he couldn't understand what it needed. What he didn't say, what Dean didn't think to ask, is about the shit that has to be taught, because biology's one thing, but there aren't any built-ins for humans when it comes to how to live your daily life.

Cas had a dozen aliases on earth before he even got his own name; it makes sense that he became a hunter before he learned the first principles of being human, and this time, Bobby wasn't there to pick up the slack.

"Chuck had a very late night and will be working on something for me for the next two days, so he'll be unavailable," Cas says out of nowhere, narrowing his eyes at the table before moving one of the bowls a quarter inch to the left. "To celebrate your recovery from near-death, I told the camp at the morning assembly that I was taking the afternoon off. Vera offered to handle anything that comes up today, so I left orders to report to her until tomorrow morning."

Dean opens his mouth to remark on Cas knowing there was such a thing as a day off these days--how the slacker junkie guru has fallen--when sense of what he said penetrates. "Uh, you told everyone you were off duty until tomorrow so we could celebrate I'm better?"

Cas edges a spoon to the exact center of the paper napkin before looking up. "Yes."

Dean nods tightly; he doesn't even need to ask how Cas phrased it. Off the top of his head, he can't think of a single one that doesn't sound like Cas took a sexday because Dean's well enough to participate. Fuck his life so very fucking much.

"What'd they say?" he asks in sheer morbid curiosity.

"To have fun," Cas answers, adding after a moment of thought, "Don't tire you out too much on your first day. Vera laughed a great deal."

"Yeah," Dean hears himself agree, calm with horror. "We'll be careful about that."

As Cas returns to the stove, having achieved the platonic ideal of table setting, Dean sits back in his chair, completely unsurprised that despite over half a decade on this planet, the most recent half exploring human sexuality in its many, many, Jesus so many forms, Cas would manage, against all odds, to remain utterly oblivious to innuendo when it was probably grinning back at him from every single goddamn person in the camp. It makes a hideous kind of sense, in that perfect fubar storm kind of way; if Cas couldn't understand why this Dean would have a problem sharing sex partners or get Phil's slowly more disturbing pleas for love and biologically impossible baby abominations (please God), anything less subtle than an outright statement of intent would go right over his head.

Eventually, he gets that he's gonna have to break this down for Cas, and if he's not past the point of plausible reasons for putting it off yet, he's right on the edge. For himself, he's past pretending his reasons for not sharing is less about how to tell Cas with the least amount of personal trauma (though that's a factor, yeah) and a lot more about how he has no fucking idea how Cas will react. Ideally, he won't care, and Cas's history backs that up, but when it comes to Dean's history, 'worst-case scenario' is always the first assumption, and usually true, and the most likely ending is Cas ending his inexplicable voluntary dry spell in an hour or less, likely with Zoe pouncing, because that Thursday incense ritual isn't fucking subtle.

(He's still not sure why it bothers him more that Zoe and Phil are trying to steal his (rumored) boyfriend while he's sick than the fact he has one at all, but he puts it down to 'asshole behavior' and he's not standing for that shit, not in his camp.)

It's not that much to ask--after everything that's happened, being stuck here, living the identity of his own worst nightmare of who he could be and what Sam might have become and how the world might end, a fever that nearly fucking killed him, holes in fucking reality on a two year countdown to death by random fucking glance--that he gets to keep this, at least for a little while longer. He doesn't think he should have to give up the only person who knows who he really is and doesn't care he wears the same face as the man he's pretending to be, and who doesn't seem to notice that Dean's got a monopoly on pretty much all of his (very limited) free time or seem to have any intention of changing that anytime soon.

He's not being fair, and the excuse that fair makes no part of his life doesn't change that he shouldn't be the kind of person who honest to God doesn't give a shit.

The waft of canned soup jerks Dean's attention from the uncomfortable direction his thoughts are trying to take; relieved, he reaches for the spoon as Cas fills each bowl and adds a ruler-straight stack of bread to the table before sitting down with the resignation of someone who's answer to 'cake or death' would require flipping a coin and a request for more time to consider his options. Because cooking food still doesn't mean Cas likes it, and he's really, really got to do something about that.

Between each carefully timed bite, Cas recites his morning in exacting detail, but even the weird new responsible Cas can't repress his natural inclination to mock the fuck out of everyone in his line of sight, and Dean learns that Kyle's on a record seven day streak of not being sentenced to mow Chitaqua's endless lawns ("Later, we observed a whistling porcine take to the heavens while a lion laid a lamb." "You're a sick fuck, you know that?"), Laura and Gary's uncomfortably public displays of affection escalating to the point where Cas suggested they film it and use it in trade on the border as porn is always in demand ("…they were doing that in the mess?" "Yes, and badly, so we wouldn't get much for it."), and Sid is sulking in hilariously undignified silence after Cas assigned him to assist the mechanics when he rigidly pointed out that he couldn't perform his duty as patrol leader without an actual team.

"He even try to argue?" he asks, leaning an elbow on the table as Cas collects their empty bowls and plates and goes to the sink, pausing for a moment to visibly brace himself before stacking everything on the counter and reaching for the homemade dish soap and a sponge.

"Sidney?" Cas snorts, pausing only to turn on the water and wait for it to heat before plugging the sink and turning around, expression sardonic. "Of course not. Though I assume Sheila and Frederick will be the beneficiaries of the multiple ways I am oppressing him for my own sadistic amusement."

"Which to be fair, you kind of are." Cas's nods in serene agreement. "Does he know anything about engines?"

"They've been ordered to instruct him on the principles of automobile repair and assign him tasks suited to his abilities when he is not required in the mess."

Dean grins, filing that away, because while Vera doesn't name names (she doesn't need to, Dean's got this 'knowing his people' thing down cold now), he's pretty sure Sid is near the top of her watch list, and not only because he almost killed her by sheer incompetence. "Glad to know you're not letting power go to your head."

"I could have assigned him extra shifts keeping Chitaqua free of excess foliage in Kyle's place," Cas adds, looking like he regrets his inexplicable mercy as he turns back to the sink. "After I'm finished, would you like coffee?"

"Sure," Dean answers without hesitation, sliding his chair back and starting toward the living room; he figured this was coming. "I'll catch up on reports."

Dropping on the couch with a sigh, he belatedly realizes that the coffee table was reorganized while he was sleeping, maps and reports and journals stacked neatly to one side to make space for a new stack, because Cas lives for reports and seems to believe more is always, always better.

With another sigh, he grabs the top one while he waits, and it's gotta say something that he's halfway down his skim of the page before he picks up this isn't anything like a report. Going back to the top, he blinks--this is printed.

"We have a printer?" he calls toward the kitchen, reading the salutation--this is a letter? People still write letters?

"Chuck has one," Cas replies over the sound of vaguely hostile splashing.

That would explain all those boxes of printer paper; he just assumed Chuck was indulging in paper-based nostalgia for his computer.

"Chuck wrote these?" He skims more slowly down the first page as the background noise of running water cuts off, cabinets open and close, and Cas's footsteps start toward the living room before coming to an early stop. Glancing up, he sees Cas doing something a lot like avoiding coming any farther into the room. "Cas?"

Cas's eyes focus on the letter in Dean's hands. "So I should probably explain what it is that you're reading."

"It looks like some really detailed letters Chuck wrote to someone--" He checks the salutation again; it's been a while since he's seen an actual honest-to-God letter in the age of email. Though he supposes current events are causing a comeback, though that does make him wonder if he should have watched The Postman after all; it's not like he had any idea that might eventually be relevant to his life and times. "--Gloria. Dude, we have a postman out here?"

"Not…exactly."

"Chuck's ex-girlfriend?" Looking back down a little desperately, he focuses on the date at the top--seriously, do letters usually have those?--and stops, doing some fast math. March: almost eight months ago. Dropping it on the couch beside him, he picks up the next one, marking the date: ten months ago; next: fourteen months; seventeen months; twenty-one months, he's seeing a pattern here. Skipping to the last one, he stares at the date for a very long time: one month before the first entry in this Dean's journal. "Who's Gloria?"

"An old friend." When he looks up, Cas almost seems relieved, and Dean mentally removes 'deliberately being a dick' from why the hell Cas isn't just explaining what the hell is going on. "She lives in Georgia, just south of Atlanta."

Dean nods, already forming his next question when he realizes that sounds familiar. "Hey, weird coincidence. That's where the FBI thinks we are."

To his credit, Cas almost looks uncomfortable. "Yes, I noticed that. I assume that means they're still making regular payments to our contact in the FBI."

"We have a--" Back up: he's not gonna get anywhere doing this piecemeal. "Cas, why was Chuck writing to your old friend in Georgia?"

"Because it's the current location of your army--well, part of it, in any case--and I ordered him to maintain contact with them after we settled here."

As the silence stretches out between them, Dean honestly has to wonder why the hell he's surprised.

"The coffee should be ready," Cas says brightly into the blank silence. "Let me get that and I'll try to explain."

"You do that," Dean answers, staring at the empty doorway as Cas retreats back into the kitchen. "I like coffee."

---

By the time Cas sets his cup on the coffee table, Dean's gotten through the first letter and just hit page two of the second one, riveted despite himself. Chuck the novelist's got nothing on Chuck the Kansas-bound Freedom Fighter getting his epistolic groove on, and boy, he had no idea Chuck's inner writer was that fucking sarcastic. As Cas takes the chair opposite the couch, Dean gives him a speculative look.

"You ever read these?"

"Chuck wanted me to approve the first one," Cas admits, wrinkling his nose as he takes a sip from his own cup. "I skimmed it, but I really wasn't interested in the details. Why?"

"No reason." He flips to the next page and bites his lip, because seriously, Chuck saved these? With an effort, he puts it aside and turns to look at Cas. "Break it down for me."

"I told you I used to train hunters for Dean before I came to Chitaqua, and that I gained instruction from other sources so I could do it well."

"Other hunters, yeah." Dean realizes he's having a once in a lifetime experience here: Cas actually making an effort to ease into a subject. He gets why he prefers the direct approach; he's shitty at anything else. "Keep going."

"I didn't tell you that I gained that experience at Dean's earlier camps. Chitaqua was only the last one."

"The last one." They were somewhere else before coming to Chitaqua, probably in Georgia, so far so good. "He had another camp before he came here?"

"Six camps."

Yeah, he heard that wrong. "What?"

"The first four were the only ones besides this one that he was personally involved in founding," Cas continues, like he thinks that's the confusing part. "The other two were formed by his order and their construction was overseen by two of his lieutenants, but we came here before they were completed. The other six--well, you might say it was treated as a standing order despite the lack of Dean's actual presence."

"That's more than six." Because getting the math right, that's the important part here.

"There are now twelve. Thirteen, if you count Chitaqua."

Dean takes a drink of coffee. "Twelve camps. Four he personally founded. Two he ordered built but never checked out. Six because--someone thought it was a really good idea and kept doing it. And--this one." He's got to admit, that does equal thirteen.

"Yes. Chitaqua, however, could be said to be independent of the earlier ones."

"You don't say." He finishes the cup in a gulp and sets on the coffee table before meeting Cas's eyes. "When was Chitaqua founded?"

"April 2012." Leaning forward, Cas drops a worn, leather-covered book on the coffee table between them. Taking a deep breath, Dean picks it up, flipping blindly through pages of his own neat print with a sense of unreality. "Dean didn't know I still had his first journal. I assume he either didn't remember to ask me what happened to it or he thought that it was left behind."

"And you didn't volunteer the information."

Cas shakes his head. "No."

Staring at the yellow-edged pages, he thinks about that; for some reason, he never really thought about the date other than assuming that before they came here they were moving around so much before that he didn't bother keeping a record. Which come to think was a stupid goddamn assumption.

Skimming the page at a glance, he pauses and goes back to the top, reading more carefully. This isn't just a record of missions and casualty reports written with the disinterest of a solitary hunter, but pages splashed with reminders and to-do lists, missions and meetings recorded with amused commentary about people who aren't just his soldiers, observations and ideas crammed between plans for the future, hope and determination and certainty written into every word that he could--they could--save the world. Dean Winchester before Chitaqua: it's like reading the words of an entirely different person.

"Cas, when did Lucifer--"

"Dean was on an extended mission and sent a message through our contacts to meet him here," Cas answers. "And here we stayed."

"Where was the mission?"

Cas meets his eyes. "Detroit."

Dean lets out a breath. A different person entirely, yeah: this was Dean Winchester before Detroit; before Sam said 'yes' to Lucifer and his world ended; before he stopped believing there was anything left worth saving. So that's how it happened.

Closing the journal, Dean smoothes one hand over the worn leather cover before putting it with the letters, wondering where the hell he's supposed to even start. It's not that he doesn't have questions--God, so many, and a few are even ones that he's wanted to ask and just didn't get around to yet--but what's killing him is there's one he didn't even think of, and right now, he doesn't know why.

The time between the fork that defined this world's path and Chitaqua is still unknown territory, but until now, he didn't realize just how much. Not once--not once--when Cas gave him glimpses of that time--jobs with Bobby, learning to be a hunter, learning to train others, weapons trafficking on the Texas border, trying to stop the spread of Croatoan, helping people escape as Croatoan went epidemic, the FBI's most wanted list, for fuck's sake, domestic terrorism--did he ever stop to think about how little Cas actually told him and how he made it sound like so much more. On a guess, that was exactly what Cas meant to do.

"So before Chitaqua, he was building camps to train hunters?" Dean asks slowly. "That's why he needed a new way to teach them."

"Yes."

He sits back, feeling strangely hollow. That year on the run from the Host and Lucifer, him and Sam and Cas and Bobby, and never once did it occur to them that last minute miracles weren't the only way to handle a proto-Apocalypse that they always assumed that if it happened, they'd lose.

This Dean Winchester, on the other hand, decided to start training new hunters because if the Apocalypse happened, he thought they could actually win.

"Georgia was first. What about the others?"

"In order: Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Now they also include Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, and most recently, Texas."

All south of the Mason-Dixon: looks like the south seceded a while back, just no one knows it yet. He pulls up a mental list of the zoned states, completely unsurprised to see the overlap.

"Texas was just zoned as infected the first time I was here," with added bombing because apparently that's a thing. He gives Cas a sharp look. "Most convenient coincidence ever or--"

"Me, with help." Which he guessed. "The future is always complicated, and once prophecy was broken, it became plural. When I had Grace, I could see all of them, but they were--confusing due to the number of variables, and not being human, I couldn't judge which was the most probable or even desirable to occur. In this, humans who possess any degree of clairvoyance have a distinct advantage; their vision tends to be singular and the stronger it is, and the more of them that had that specific one, the more likely it was to occur. Giving them the possibilities would often trigger their own abilities and the most likely scenario discovered."

"Predicting the future by committee." That's--kind of cool, actually. "How'd you find them?"

"They tended to be attracted to Dean's presence," Cas answers, smiling faintly and Dean swallows down the lump in his throat at the fond expression on Cas's face. "Accuracy reached ninety-eight percent for three months in advance and eight-one percent at one year. We did better in generalities, and the order we founded the first six camps followed the order those states would be declared infected and their borders closed. The next six--from what I remember--were chosen from the list of potential infected states to concentrate on those contiguous to the original six to make it easier for the camps to keep in contact with each other as well as assist each other when they were finally zoned."

"Okay, let's start at the top," he decides, hoping his voice sounds normal. "Georgia, the first one, when was that?"

"Dean and I went to Bobby's to establish a temporary headquarters, both to contact other hunters and to more easily track the progress of the Apocalypse and help as needed. At the time, Croatoan was still only a possibility, and not the most pressing, though we would later stop the initial distribution through the swine flu vaccine, which was Pestilence's first attempt to achieve an epidemic. Bobby had the beginnings of a system to discover where our help was needed and locate the nearest available hunter to handle it if we couldn't do it ourselves."

"Those jobs you did with Bobby--the ones that took a couple of weeks--that's one of the reasons he took them, right?" Dean asks, putting it together. "Got you around the country more so Bobby could get more contacts and use your memory for awesome?" He cracks a grin at Cas's nod. "Yeah, I'd have hated doing that. No wonder he told you to go."

"Bobby took jobs that required extensive travel to build up a more stable network as well as consult in unusual cases, especially those that would need my abilities," Cas confirms. "My memory was an advantage; Bobby could concentrate his efforts on the job as well as avoid the possibility of hunters becoming suspicious of our motives if they saw handwritten notes about them, their location, their experience, and their skills. He was also pleased that he'd never have to ask anyone to repeat their phone number again."

That right there would be worth its weight in gold, or an entire drive of Cas's increasingly bizarre questions back then. "That's when Dean trained you?"

"Yes, though at the time, it was to improve my skills so I could be of help to Bobby, as there was still no guarantee how long I would have my Grace," Cas answers, finally losing the unsettlingly good posture in a modified slouch, which Dean takes as Cas starting to relax. "In retrospect…."

"--that was probably where he got the idea to train hunters," Dean finishes for him. Training Cas would have been different from teaching Sam; he needed to get back all the way to basics--human basics, even--to give Cas context for what he'd be learning, and that would have gotten him thinking. "So why Georgia? How'd you end up there?"

"A job that was on Dean's priority list for us to handle," Cas answers, and Dean watches one leg surreptitiously drape itself over the arm of the chair and feels himself starting to relax as well. "Bobby was alerted to a group of what appeared to be demons terrorizing rural farmers south of Atlanta in late November of that year, and anything that involved demons was subject to Dean's personal attention." Yeah, no surprise there. "After we completed an exorcism of all of the demons involved, we were approached by one of those who had been attacked, a woman with an unusually strong but very limited degree of clairvoyance. It was triggered not by an event but by a person involved in it, which is not unusual in itself, but its limitation was that she had to interact with the individual in question for it to work."

"That's specific."

"Clairvoyance by its nature is extremely idiosyncratic," Cas says with a moue of resignation for the weirdness of humans, tucking his hair behind one ear to look at Dean solemnly; fuck his life, that's still goddamn adorable. "As she put it, her reputation for being extremely hospitable to strangers and highly involved in social events in her community was entirely based on never knowing what event or which person at it would be significant. She asked us to remain when we were done, as her son's flight had been delayed and she had a great deal of food for Thanksgiving and no one to eat it. As we had to make sure the demons didn't return…."

Dean grins; who the hell turns down turkey? "You helped her out. Again."

"We agreed to stay for a few days in case there were any further attacks," Cas agrees, foot starting to swing idly. "Dean told her a little about what we were doing and how few people there were who could help, and she offered us the use of her property for whatever we might need it for."

Dean blinks. "Wait, she just--offered up her land over dressing and cranberry sauce?"

"Turkey sandwiches and Lays potato chips--Thanksgiving was the previous day," Cas says earnestly, because apparently the type of meal was a factor here. "She told me later that she wasn't entirely clear on the reason why she offered, just that it was necessary, which depressingly is a very common characteristic of human clairvoyance."

"Seriously, she just said--I have land, take it for whatever because I have a good feeling about you?" Dean asks incredulously.

"The feeling, as she described it, was more 'imminent doom and the end of all things in a rain of blood and fire' if she didn't," Cas explains. "And toads, of course. We were definitely preferable to that."

Dean wants to say something, but he's kind of stuck on the 'rain of blood and fire'. 'And toads, of course.'

"The next morning, Dean asked her how she would feel about using her property to establish a safe place to train hunters if there was enough space available to do so," Cas continues, oblivious to Dean's inability to stop imagining toads descending from the sky at terminal velocity and Penn making a stew out of the remains. "As she was the second largest landowner in Georgia, space wasn't a problem."

Dean jerks back into the present with a bang. "What?"

"Gloria is the second largest landowner in--"

"This just stopped being unbelievable and started being creepy, for the record."

Cas's expression flickers through a lot of variations of something before settling on 'resigned'. "Gloria's clairvoyance became active during puberty, which isn't uncommon. However, unlike most clairvoyants, her first vision was very powerful and--memorable."

Yeah, he hates it already. "What did she see?"

"Lucifer being released from his cage, though unfortunately, the time was ambiguous." Dean shuts his eyes. "She only saw the face of one of the men and for obvious reasons, she remembered it."

"Mine." Jesus Christ. "So she knew me and Sam…."

"Yes. However, she had enough context from what she saw to…."

"Not shoot me on sight?" Taking another breath, he makes himself say the words. "How much does she know?"

"Dean told her everything," Cas answers calmly, and Dean hears 'right back to the Hell thing' crystal clear. "He said--he said we weren't the Host, and for her to make a decision--"

"Consent's not just a word." Not anymore. "She needed to know everything so she could make the choice."

Cas blinks, blue eyes focusing on him in surprise. "Yes."

Dean licks his lips and makes himself nod. "And she agreed. I mean, obviously. And Dean had a place to start training hunters in Georgia."

"There were so few," Cas says, expression darkening. "The jobs we took--and the ones that we couldn't, for that matter--made it very clear that the most immediate threat to humanity's survival might be the lack of hunters. The mortality rate even for experienced hunters was becoming unsettlingly high, which not only reduced the number available but the number of new hunters that could be taught their craft."

Dean thinks about what Cas told him about the history of hunting last night. "They weren't just dying on the job, were they? They were being targeted."

Cas stills, blue eyes widening. "I thought it was a possibility, yes. How did you--"

"What you said about hunter families," he answers distractedly, feeling the pieces slotting into place. "When I asked you what Lucifer was doing before--" Cas nods quickly, sparing him the necessity of 'he started wearing a Samsuit', "--now I got my answer. He was stacking the deck."

Cas frowns. "Poker?"

"That's Lucy's game: count the cards, stack the deck, and cheat the fuck out of everyone at the table with a smile," Dean confirms. "Son of a bitch. He knew how angels trained hunters; hasn't changed since the beginning. Was it those who came from families who'd been doing it for years?"

"Yes," Cas answers slowly. "They made a significant percentage of the deaths."

"Makes sense. He takes out them, he takes generations of history and skills with them that we can't get back. Not to mention they were probably the ones most likely to want to teach new hunters and knew what and how to teach 'em." He realizes that Cas is staring at him like he's never seen him before. "What? That's what you thought was happening, right?"

"Even with Bobby's network, there was no way to get a complete list of those killed, much less personal details, but….I suspected, yes."

"Good call."

Cas nods slowly, still looking--yeah, no idea. "Thank you."

"So getting back--you told Dean all about hunters throughout history, and he figured it was time for a change," Dean continues, filing this conversation away for later. "Instead of making people chase down hunters and hope the best, he wanted somewhere they could go to get training, and used Bobby's network and those jobs you and Bobby went on to spread the word. So far so good?"

"It's almost as if you were there," Cas confirms with a slow smile, leaning his head on one hand. "We also had the assistance of Gloria's family in this. Her eldest son, Elijah, wasn't a hunter, but after he arrived and found out what happened to Gloria, he asked Dean to train him, and the rest of her extended family eventually made the same request. They made the core of the first group of hunters to be trained at Alpha."

Huh. "How extended?"

"Twenty-one members," Cas says calmly, taking a sip from his cup while Dean fails to breathe. "Elijah and his five siblings, Gloria's younger brother and his wife, their four children and their spouses, the two surviving grandchildren of her older brother and one of their spouses, and the two children of Gloria's deceased husband's only sister."

Dean nods blankly. "So that's--extended."

"Gloria and Elijah were very persuasive," Cas says. "Gloria's younger brother was also among those who were attacked by those demons, so we had the advantage of an audience who already believed us."

"Yeah, that'd do it."

"What Dean wanted was a place, protected by the strongest wards possible, to teach new hunters what they needed to know in relative safety and assure that they had the necessary skills before they actually started to fight," Cas continues. "Elijah was able to translate that idea into reality, which was something neither Dean nor I had the necessary knowledge or experience to do. By New Year's Day, Elijah had created the infrastructure for the first camp with the help of those hunters who responded to Bobby and Dean's request for assistance and the first recruits."

"All twenty-one of them." Jesus, saying it doesn't make it any less weird.

"Seventy-two," Cas corrects him casually, mouth twitching at Dean's expression. "Bobby's network was very efficient."

"In a month?" Fascinated, he studies Cas's pleased expression. "And that's when you learned to train hunters?"

"Yes, though in a sense, it could be considered on the job training. Unlike the call for recruits, the response among experienced hunters was--less than enthusiastic." Dean grimaces; hunters are paranoid fucks, and secrecy is a way of life, yeah, but come the hell on; the middle of the pre-Apocalypse should be considered a goddamn exception. "However, we made up for quantity with quality; the ones that joined us tended to be both highly experienced and extremely skilled, and many came from families who had been hunting for generations and had experience in instructing others from teaching younger family members.

"They were able to help Dean create a model to train new hunters that was simple, thorough, and made instruction both faster and easier. I was among the first who learned to instruct hunters using that model so it could be observed by those with more experience, since my Grace could protect the new recruits from injury while I learned as well. It also helped that after learning from Dean how to fight in a human body, I was familiar enough with it to access my memories of generations of hunters and teach this body to use those skills so I could pass them to others."

"And with Grace, you could also heal yourself when you made mistakes." Practice dummy on himself: of course he did, and probably had a blast doing it. "So Dean created boot camp for hunters."

"That was its original purpose, yes." Cas answers evasively, adding a performance-art quality casual stretch. "Gloria's property was extensive, and being undeveloped, that allowed a great deal of flexibility in the camp's design, which Elijah took advantage of when building Alpha."

Dean raises an eyebrow and just manages not to laugh. "No electricity, no water, no roads?"

"Gloria was also a retired English professor," Cas adds idly. "Her children--until that time--were either still in college or involved in various white-collar professions that had no affiliation, even historical, with hunters."

He'd have to be dead to miss that cue. "No development means nothing on government surveys to worry about. And she wasn't on any of the watch lists for militias or survivalist groups." Cas grins at him. "Yeah, I passed, keep going."

"Her family also had a great deal of capital and extensive contacts throughout the state, and one of Gloria's younger sons was in the process of finishing a degree in engineering. Elijah met with the other hunters to find out what would be needed and used his family's resources to build the initial camp far more quickly than Dean expected. We, of course, gave him access to Dean's multiple accounts and he quickly became an expert at creative methods of acquiring further capital."

"Dean taught the son of an English professor and the second largest landowner in Georgia identity and credit card fraud?"

"And I taught him laundering," Cas adds, then frowns. "It's nothing at all like The Sopranos."

Dean marvels yet again that no one thought to check what Cas was learning about humanity via premium cable and the Lifetime Channel. Tony Soprano isn't a role model for anyone, ever. "Yeah, who knew? Keep going."

"Using Gloria's property had another advantage; due to the fact that her family could claim the land both by legal ownership and blood right, Bobby was able to create extremely powerful wards to protect it. This not only assured that new hunters would be protected while they learned their craft in a controlled environment but also effectively made the camp the safest places to be on this entire world."

"So not just boot camp," Dean interprets, startled. "Somewhere safe for their families to stay, if they had any left." Of course Elijah would think like that; he wasn't a loner, not with his entire goddamn family joining up and with the input of those hunters with a family history doing it.

"Elijah began to expand the camp's function beyond simply training hunters as quickly as he could without attracting unwanted attention," Cas confirms. "Soon, entire families were living in the camps and they provided a labor force that helped to expand functionality. Elijah thought ahead; he also worked to make Alpha as self-sufficient as possible should the worst happen while there was still time for experimentation. By the time the epidemic began, the groundwork was completed for the first four camps to become permanent residences in addition to hunting camps, and work had already begun on the next two." Cas hesitates, foot stilling briefly. "Dean and Bobby learned a great deal from Elijah and the creation of the initial camps, which they adapted when we came here."

Dean's going to go out on a limb and say Chitaqua is definitely not the Elijah model, though. "How different are those camps from Chitaqua?"

"It's been over two years since I was in the South," Cas answers, blue eyes fixing on some point above Dean's shoulder, and despite the slump, Dean can see him tensing again. "I'm rather curious as well. When we left, Elijah had been successful in providing a minimal living standard for those in his camp that included electricity and running water with the help of several residents with engineering experience. And no one had to live in tents, which trust me, was greatly appreciated by all."

"Plumbing and working roofs." Cas smiles, obviously remembering that conversation. "So you did know what I was talking about."

"I never said I didn't," he answers obliquely. "I just didn't notice until you mentioned it. It's been over two years since I left Alpha."

Two years not thinking about it, yeah; this isn't just history, part of this Dean's life, but another part of Cas's life, too. "You haven't been back since you got here?"

Cas shakes his head, staring at the wall again. "No." There's a long hesitation before he adds, "If you're amenable to a field trip, we could satisfy both our curiosity and go there ourselves."

"To Alpha?" It's not a brothel, but he's gotta wonder if this ends with them being thrown out anyway. "So the leader--Elijah, right?--you want to contact him and--" He gropes for the right words. "Get permission for a visit?"

"The camp has two leaders: Elijah is administrator of camp functions, while Amy trains and leads their hunters and handles camp security and defense. Considering their function as residence, education center, and their duty to protect the state, they divided the duties to take advantage of their strengths and provide for the various needs of all the camp's residents, and the other camps began to follow their model in that as well."

On a bet, that wasn't this Dean's idea, either. "So you'll contact the leaders? Who's been pony expressing all this time, anyway?" Someone who could be trusted with the information, wouldn't tell Dean Winchester the time of day, and was the one person--maybe the only person--that looked at the resident junkie slash Fallen angel and saw a person, albeit a really fucked up one. The one who brought a kid to Chitaqua and trusted Cas to help him and who couped the entire goddamn camp because she trusted Cas to save them.

"I talked to Vera and Jeremy this morning and asked them to prepare to leave for Georgia to inform Gloria of our impending arrival if you decided to go," Cas answers, still not looking at Dean. "And bring back any information Gloria feels we'll need before we arrive, of course. However, I don't think anyone will hold us to a specific date, as your health is paramount."

Dean nods, keeping his expression neutral. "And if they tell us no?"

Cas looks up, and damned if he doesn't look amused. "I highly doubt it would occur to anyone to deny you access to any of the camps for any reason."

"Because Dean founded them?" Right: this is Cas. "If he fucked off for two years and Elijah and Amy are in charge of the one in Georgia--"

"Elijah and Amy were placed in charge of the Georgia camp by Dean's order," Cas interrupts. "Each of the camps was placed in the charge of a trusted lieutenant, but they were founded in Dean's name and operated under his leadership. I think under the circumstances, they would welcome your return once their reservations have been aired."

Dean stares at him for a moment, wondering what he's missing. "But he left."

"He's also dead, but as they don't know that, it's irrelevant." Cas tilts his head. "You chose to be Dean Winchester here, and I told you that this camp was yours. I just didn't mention that it wasn't the only one."

"You're saying--what? That they're mine?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

Dean leans over and picks up his cup, holding it out to Cas. "I need more coffee for this."

---

"And I'm telling you, this isn't the goddam Host," which is a low blow, but he's way too rattled to stop himself, "and people don't wait around for people who abandoned them. Which, in case this wasn't obvious, is exactly what he did!"

Cas finishes his third cup of coffee from the second pot with every indication of enjoyment, which despite everything else, reminds him to check with Chuck on their supply of tea and see what Cas makes of it with the addition of sugar. Why didn't anyone--Dean fucking Winchester--tell him about the magic rule that sugar makes anything better? And he does mean anything--may not make it good, but it does make it better.

"Your lieutenants are loyal--"

"Two. Years."

Cas rolls his eyes. "And almost six months, yes, I know. Would you like the days, hours, minutes and seconds as well?"

Dean wonders what kind of clean and sober makes someone crazier. Maybe it's the abstinence thing? "If it's that easy, then why didn't you tell me before?"

Cas calmly refills his cup--this time, he brought the pot with him, and well-whiskeyed by the taste, this being the definition of a special occasion and/or reason for heavy drinking--and takes his time adding sugar and cream, pausing every so often to check the flavor and fuck with Dean's head before sitting back in his chair to give him the most patient look in the history of looks.

"Cas? Why didn't you--"

"I thought that much would be obvious," Cas says coolly. "When would you have liked me to tell you?"

What. The. Fuck. "I've been here almost three fucking months--"

"Of course, how foolish of me; the opportunities have been legion," Cas says. "You tell me which of these would have been a good time: the first three weeks, when you were both miserable and invisible; when Chuck revealed your existence to the entire camp and we both were so drunk that we redefined 'maudlin' as well as the concept of a 'hangover'; when you were learning about this world as well as the camp when not engaged in excessive brooding?" Before Dean can answer, Cas straightens with an arrested expression. "During the fever, of course; why didn't I--"

"Fuck you," Dean snaps. "How about when you agreed to help me be him? How about fucking telling me me then what the fuck I was signing up for before I signed up!"

Cas stills. "Chitaqua was the only thing you signed up for. That's the reason I didn't tell you."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Three people here know about the other camps besides myself: Chuck, Vera, and Jeremy," Cas says flatly. "Chuck was the only other person besides myself and Dean who came here from them. Vera and Jeremy only knew what I told them so they could help Chuck keep in contact with Gloria. Vera and Jeremy had no reason to tell you about the camps, as they believed you already knew about them, and the day you told me you wanted to do this, I instructed Chuck not to tell you anything about them and to refer any questions regarding anything we did before Chitaqua to me."

Startled, Dean rethinks every (very limited) interaction he's had with Chuck since he left Dean's cabin with Cas that day. "Is that why he usually avoids me unless you're around or I'm unconscious?"

"I may have been unduly empathetic on the subject," Cas admits, not looking all that guilty about it. "Fortunately, you were far too busy learning about Chitaqua and our history here to be very interested in Dean's past--"

"Yeah, my bad, I was more curious about yours."

Cas stills, but before he can say anything Dean charges on.

"So why are you telling me now?" he asks bitterly, thinking of everything Cas told him about his time on earth and how much was real. Cas is the best liar he's ever met; he can do it with nothing but the truth. "Were you testing me all this time? Did I finally pass? How?"

"It wasn't a test."

"Then what was it?" Dean demands. "Why now and not back then?"

After what feels like forever, Cas finally says, "You chose to do this in Chitaqua because of what Chuck had already set in motion. It was your choice, but your options were limited."

"That's not an answer," Dean snaps back. "You were hiding this, and don't tell me this was that not thinking shit, not this time; you worked at it." Cas looks away. "You didn't tell me I was the one who stopped the Apocalypse when Dean died. You didn't tell me you trained Dean's hunters here. You didn't tell me--" About Luke. He's got enough self-control to cram the words back down his throat before they get anywhere near air. He's not pissed enough to throw that in Cas's face; he's not the kind of person who does that, and he'll never be someone who could do that to Cas. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

"When you first said that you wanted to do this in Chitaqua," Cas says slowly, looking up, "if I had told you that there were other camps that also looked to Dean for leadership, would you still have chosen to do this?"

Dean frowns, startled by the question. "I don't know. If I'd known they were out there waiting for him…" Whether or not he could do it isn't even on the radar; if they're out there, waiting for Dean Winchester--well, he's Dean Winchester now, so-- "Yeah. At least make contact with them or something."

"I know," Cas says. "I never doubted that you could do it or that, given this information, that you would. That's why I concealed it from you."

"Why--" All at once, it clicks; that was, actually, an answer. "You were giving me a choice."

"You had no choice coming here, or in being revealed to the camp as Dean Winchester," Cas confirms quietly. "You may blame me for deceiving you--I did, and it was deliberate--but it was done to assure that what choice you had left was yours alone, free of coercion or expectation. Consent," he adds, echoing Dean earlier, "isn't and will never again be just a word."

Yeah, he gets that. "You didn't want me to do, though."

"You were so unhappy when you came here," Cas says softly, blue eyes unfocused, like he's seeing something beyond this room. "I remember how that felt."

Dean sucks in a breath.

"Everything you knew was gone," Cas continues distantly. "You were trapped in a world not your own, surrounded by strangers, and some of them wore the faces of people you thought you knew. You had so much to learn with so little context for it; all you could do is hope that, eventually, you'd be able to understand, and in time, you would. In time, it grew easier; in time, it hurt less. That doesn't mean you can ever forget what you lost." Abruptly, Cas looks at him, blue eyes dark. "That doesn't mean that, given the opportunity, you wouldn't go back."

Fuck, he gets it now. "Cas, listen--"

"You'd go back, to your brother and your life and your world," Cas continues ruthlessly, "and with you would go the memories of the people you met here, the camps that you led, and the world whose Apocalypse your presence stopped. That wound would never heal, Dean, not for the length of your life. You wouldn't let it, and I didn't want you to have to carry it.

"So I deceived you, I concealed what I could and redirected your attention when necessary, I did everything short of lying to you outright, and yet, despite my best efforts, the only thing I successfully concealed were those camps," Cas finishes unhappily. "And possibly only managed that because you were delayed by a near-fatal fever. What you want to do here now makes further concealment not only pointless but dangerous and cruel; you can do this, but having all the tools would help. That doesn't change the fact that when you go back, it won't be in joy and relief--"

"If," Dean interrupts desperately, wondering why the hell he didn't make this clearer last night. "If we even find a way for me to do it--which right now is impossible since everyone who can do it is dead or fucking Lucifer--you think I'd do that now? So long, good luck with the Apocalypse thing, gotta get back to hunting monsters and helping people in my world, which isn't in danger of anything but a werewolf uprising or something?"

"Werewolves are--?"

"Cas, come on. You think I'd leave now, knowing the second I do, it's game over, Apocalypse won by fucking Lucifer, rocks fall and everyone dies if they're lucky?"

Cas goes still; holy shit, he really didn't know. "You'd stay."

"Yeah," Dean answers. "I didn't have a choice coming here, fine, so I'm making it now; I'm staying to see this through."

"You may not have a choice--"

"There's always a choice," he interrupts. "Mine's called 'Sam and a fuckload of books'." Among other options if it comes down to it, but if Cas didn't think of it, there's no reason to tell him.

"Despite the evidence to the contrary," Cas says unsteadily, "it's not that easy to cross time and space with any reasonable chance of success."

"With Sam on the case?" Dean snorts. "I give it a couple of weeks, tops; I'd be back before you had time to miss me or Lucifer got on his world conquest plan. Not like he's started yet, so we'd be fine."

"You're serious."

"Like death, taxes, and winning this thing," he answers, meeting Cas's eyes. "I'm in. Any questions?"

"You'd give up your home, your brother, your entire life, to fight for a world not your own in a war there's no guarantee we'll win?"

"If you need a guarantee before you'll fight, you're doing it for the wrong reasons," Dean answers. "You fight because it's worth fighting for. Besides, not like you can talk; that's exactly what you did."

Cas shuts his mouth with an audible click of teeth.

"You can't forget what you lost," Dean tells him. "That doesn't mean there wasn't a good reason for doing it. Would you go back if you could?"

"I'd go back," Cas says softly, and for an endless moment, Dean feels his world grind to a brutal halt. "I'd go back to the moment before I Fell, when I stood before the Host for the last time, and I'd tell myself that it doesn't matter what I choose, that we would always lose. So when I Fell, the Host would know exactly why I did it." He pauses for a pregnant moment. "And this time, I'd tell them to fuck themselves before I left."

Dean thinks, lightheaded with relief: I'm gonna get you for that one.

"That," Cas adds thoughtfully, one corner of his mouth twitching upward, "still bothers me sometimes."

Slumping back into the couch cushions, he stops fighting the smile spreading across his face. "So while we're here, anything else I need to know about him? Married, had kids, opened Purgatory and became a crazy god….?"

Cas tilts his head before looking at Dean from behind a mess of dark hair. "Three and a half years ago he had unprotected sex with an extremely attractive hunter at Alpha and acquired an unpleasantly persistent case of pubic lice that he inadvertently passed on to--"

Oh fuck no. "Shut up."

"Then no," Cas says, grinning at him bright enough to light the sky, "that would be it." After a moment, he sighs. "However, there are some things…."

"No," Dean says flatly, feeling the beginnings of a faint throbbing in his head that he knows from experience will only get worse, so he's got to do this fast. "I'm in this, and that means I need to know everything. You can't just decide for me what I need to know, even if you think it's for my own good. Not anymore."

"I've never lied to you." After a few seconds of ignoring Dean's patiently stare of are-you-fucking-with-me, he rolls his eyes. "I don't think what either of us say when we argue counts. If you feel differently, you've made several statements that I feel require clarification on their veracity."

Probably more than several, and unlike Cas, he doesn't have an angelic goddamn memory. "Give you that one," he concedes grudgingly, fighting the urge to rub his temples; it won't help. "You can't keep deciding what I should and shouldn't know about my own goddamn life, Cas. Not like you've been doing that great a job so far."

He regrets it the moment the words come out of his mouth. Cas doesn't flinch, but even through the flare of pain that's his headache leveling up, he can see guilt flicker across Cas's face before his expression goes blank.

"I can have Chuck continue the explanation if you feel that you can no longer trust me to--"

"Not what I meant and you know it." He feels the beginnings of a chill and just barely suppresses the shiver; Christ, he doesn't have time for this shit right now. "Look--"

"I can't tell if you're actually angry with me or using that to conceal that you're tired and suppressing a headache," Cas interrupts. Dean would argue that, but a glance at his watch tells him that it's been over three hours since lunch and actually, that could be why he's feeling off. Goddamn fucking brownies. "Before you argue any further and increase your discomfort, I think I can explain. As a hunter, you concealed much about your life because without context, people would believe you were insane. Though it could be argued that knowing the context only makes you seem more insane for voluntarily choosing hunting as your life path."

"Not helping your case here."

"I apologize," Cas answers, not even trying to fake sincerity. "Should I be more obvious in drawing the parallels between what at this time would make no sense to you but when you have context, would be more understandable?"

Dean supposes he might deserve that, at least a little. "I get that."

"I won't lie to you," Cas adds, holding his gaze. "I won't prevaricate and I won't conceal what is mine to tell. If I can't answer your questions, I'll tell you that and the reason why. I promise you that."

He nods slowly. "Okay."

"Good. Can we now turn our attention to preventing a potential relapse or did you enjoy spending time sitting in ice engaged in conversation with your feet? Riveting, I assure you; if only I'd thought to borrow Chuck's camera."

Resigned, Dean stalks to the bedroom--which does nothing for his temper and even less for the headache--flipping off the lights on his way to the bedside table and finding the ibuprofen by touch. Fishing out two pills, he swallows them dry before dropping onto the mattress with a sigh as it squeals a nerve-jangling welcome.

Shoving back the blankets, he glances up and sees Cas standing uncertainly just short of the bedroom door.

"Headache," he says clearly, pasting on a smile that might pass for real in the dark. If Cas couldn't see in the dark. "It was just the headache."

"No, it wasn't." Cas hesitates before taking a step back. "If you need anything--"

"You'll be there," Dean says automatically, echoing another conversation they never got to finish, when he didn't know what to say so he didn't say anything, instead leaving it for a morning that never came and maybe never will. This time, he still might not know what to say, but pretty much anything is better than nothing at all. "Cas, wait."

Cas hesitates before returning to stand just outside the doorway.

"It's mostly the headache," he says firmly, ignoring the skepticism Cas-ward. "I get why you didn't want to tell me, okay? It's just…" New. Weird. A reminder that he'll never be anything other than a ghost, and this time, it's by his own goddamn choice.

In December of 2009, Dean can't swear to it, but on a guess, he was doing shots in the nearest bar and failing to get laid before returning to a motel room to hate everything before he passed out. Here, Dean Winchester was doing jobs, training Cas, building a hunters network, being offered real estate, designing hunter boot camps, and getting entire families to pledge their lives and money to a war against Lucifer while spreading crabs across rural Georgia. The only surprise is that he didn't cure cancer, Croatoan, and pull off world peace and a new age of mankind, but maybe he had to sleep or something. And Detroit, of course. Goddamn fucking Detroit.

It's not like he enjoyed seeing himself worse-case scenario, but as it turns out, seeing best-case isn't actually better. He gets why Cas Fell for this Dean, why Cas doesn't see him when he looks at Dean; they're really nothing alike, not at all.

Jesus, this world got a shitty deal when it came to Dean Winchesters meant to save it; he may actually be a downgrade.

He takes a deep breath and this time manages a real smile; you never forget what you lost, and it's a dick move to punish Cas for it. "It's a lot to take in. And you know, you hiding it from me. Still pissed about that."

The faintest relaxation of Cas's shoulders tells him that there's one thing he can do that this Dean couldn't; when he lies to Cas, Cas believes him. "I could make it up to you."

To his own surprise, he feels his own tension drain away. Cas thinks he can do this; failure's inevitable, sure, but it's never stopped him before. "Oh yeah you will."

"Get some rest," Cas says with a faint smile as he turns away. "I'll wake you when dinner's ready."

---

Dean thought the hardest thing he'd have to do was leave that room when Cas woke him for dinner; he was wrong. So, so very goddamn wrong.

Hard was choking down every mouthful of food between each and every question Cas would expect him to ask, listen to each and every one of his answers, and wait for Cas to finish washing dishes and nod enthusiastically when he asks if Dean wants more coffee, go face that goddamn coffee table, and start learning everything.

"Gloria's responses to Chuck's correspondence, as well as Vera's and Jeremy's reports from their time with Gloria, are here," Cas tells him, sitting cross-legged on the other side of the coffee table as he points to each neatly organized pile, sorted descending by date, because Cas. "By my order, they didn't enter Alpha or leave Gloria's home during their stay, and Gloria assured that no one knew of their presence."

Dean nods automatically then stops, frowning. "Wait, so how did Elijah and Amy think Gloria was getting her information? Really convenient clairvoyance with a two to four month timetable?"

"As they don't know she's clairvoyant, no; I assume it was more deliberate ignorance," Cas answers, adding at Dean's surprise, "Dean, Gloria was born nearly twenty years before the Civil Rights movement in the Deep South and attended the University of Georgia one year after it desegregated. She was one of the first Black women to receive a PhD in Georgia as well as achieve tenure as a professor."

Dean winces. "So adding 'totally crazy chick who thinks she can see the future' was probably a bad idea."

"Let's say that she felt that adding that to 'Black', 'female', and 'in the South' wouldn't be an improvement on her lot in life," Cas agrees. "Elijah may have his suspicions, but he's her son; even if he does, he wouldn't care."

Despite himself, he picks up one of Gloria's letters, the neat print marching across the page in rigidly straight lines. They say you can tell a lot by someone's handwriting, and he's definitely getting 'English professor' from each ruthlessly punctuated sentence complete with semi-colons, which he'd assumed for a long time were invented by his English III teacher just to fuck with him. Looking at Cas, he cocks his head, curious. "So she was a friend?" Cas doesn't use that word very often (read: ever), and Dean's still not sure he entirely gets Vera may actually define the term in letter and spirit both.

Cas rolls his eyes. "In case this needs clarification, at the time I was still an angel and her husband was recently deceased, so no, I didn't have sex with her."

Not where he was going with this. "And she was what, seventy?"

"Sixty-seven," Cas answers, starting to frown. "Why would that matter?"

Dean starts to answer, but the genuine bewilderment stops him short. "No reason," he says instead, tapping the letter for distraction purposes. "She was okay with the angel thing?"

"Humans generally are, whether we reveal ourselves or not," Cas says with the faintest trace of irony. "It seems to only be a problem when we're not."

Yeah, that: let's try this again. "But she knew about you?"

"As with all divine gifts, the disadvantages are legion and the advantages practically non-existent," Cas answers. "Not to mention they tend end in madness, addiction, suicide, or the beginnings of a new religious movement with unsettling theology, narcotic abuse, and a penchant for setting people on fire." Dean blinks. "However, the divine origin of their gifts mean that they recognize us in our vessels. And outside of them, of course, but as you already know, viewing our true form isn't recommended."

Dean remembers Pamela and nods firmly before making a semi-convincing attempt to hide a fake yawn; time to get down to business. "So I should--"

"Go to bed?" Before Dean can react, Cas sweeps up journals and letters and deposits them on in Report Box 2. "Excellent idea. This can wait until tomorrow."

"Dude." Dean grits his teeth and tries 'casual'. "I like reading in bed. Helps me sleep."

"Then I'll provide you with alternate reading material."

So that didn't work. "What are you doing?"

"I don't make idle threats," Cas answers, leaning an elbow on the coffee table. "I'd prefer to avoid having to prove that to you, but if you persist on this hideously familiar course of action, I will set that box on fire and very possibly myself rather than spend one more night listening to you pace despondently in your room and pretend it's for educational purposes."

"Uh--"

"If you wish to indulge in feelings of imaginary inadequacy and self-loathing," Cas continues, "you'll do it like everyone else; excessive drinking, four to six joints, and a handpicked selection of extremely maudlin power ballads that I know from experience will make suicide seem extremely attractive at the exact point you lose hand-eye coordination and forget how to walk. If we do it with Eldritch Horror, the misery can be extended into the morning after without any further effort on our part."

Dean closes his eyes. "Cas--"

"Or I could seduce you," Cas offers, and Dean opens his eyes to see Cas's slow, satisfied smile. "Your choice, of course."

To his surprise, Dean opens his mouth to answer and hears instead a choked laugh emerge. "Jesus, Cas."

Cas tilts his head, studying him for a moment, then gets to his feet. "Get up. I want to show you something."

---

Dean obediently drops on the bed at Cas's patient stare and watches Cas open up the closet-armory. If this is Cas's seduction technique, Chitaqua just got a lot weirder than he thought, and not like it was weird before.

"I had to be tied to my bed when I broke my foot," Cas says over his shoulder, which brings up some very interesting thoughts on Vera's method and upgrading 'potential seduction' to 'moderate to high'. "Convalescence is very boring, as you know. There is only so much to read."

Bracing a hand behind him, Dean sighs noisily and tries not to look around for those Velcro restraints. "Your library must have gotten a workout. Learn any new sigils or spells?"

"I learned the one ring rules them all." Crouching, Cas pulls two dusty, water-stained boxes out before making a satisfied sound and pulling out another one, less waterstained but just as dusty, and brings it to the bed. Materializing a knife from somewhere, he hands it hilt first to Dean, who takes it with a sense of growing alarm on exactly what the plan is here. "You can do the honors."

Dean looks between the box and Cas and decides to just ask. "If this is weird sex toys--"

"Those are in the utility closet library," Cas assures him, sitting down and looking between him and the box while Dean tries to figure out how the hell he missed that during his (several, failed) Eldritch Horror searches. "Top shelf, behind the Latin dictionary and volumes four, ten, sixteen, nineteen, and twenty-one of the 15th Edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1983."

Yeah, he wondered about that. "Why only those five?"

"The garage sale only had those five."

Right. "Why did you buy them?"

"My cell phone was out of minutes and I needed change to use a pay phone to call Dean," Cas answers reasonably. "They were twenty five cents each, so I exchanged my five dollar bill for two ones, seven quarters, and five books, which incidentally were also the first items of personal property I ever purchased. It was very exciting, and were both interesting to read and exemplary door stops." He gives Dean a long look before glancing at the box. "Anytime you're ready, of course."

Dean slow blinks his acknowledgment it actually happened just like that and turns toward the box, squinting at the vaguely familiar faded green smear of words before he sucks in a startled breath. Reaching out, he traces the memory of Sam's name in his own angry scrawl.

"This was at Bobby's."

"I found it in the attic when Dean and I went to…I told Dean we might need Bobby's books," Cas says, voice wavering briefly. "He didn't notice it among the other boxes."

Getting on his knees, Dean slits the packing tape and shoves open the cardboard leaves to stare unblinkingly at the stacks of paperback books, the spoils of almost twenty years on the road and more used bookstores in more cities than he can count.

"When Sam went to Stanford, he didn't take much with him," Dean says, picking up one dog-eared Ursula LeGuin, eyes prickling unexpectedly as he carefully opens the cover and sees Sam Winchester printed neatly in blue ink. "He used to hide these everywhere; Dad's truck, Bobby's, in the back of the Impala and under the seats, like I wouldn't notice or something. I got them all together and hid them from Dad until I could get to Bobby's and leave them there. I forgot about that." Closing it, he puts it back again and retrieves another, Sam Winchester in careful cursive this time, fifth grade, got an A on his handwriting assignment and God. God. "I always meant to give them back."

He's still nosing through the books--Philip K Dick, Matheson's I Am Legend, dog-eared and cracking binding with Gibson's Neuromancer beside it, Vonnegut and Joyce and King's The Stand (disturbingly appropriate these days, now that he thinks about it), the complete works of Jane fucking Austen from English III and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina from English IV when Sam was taking the AP exam and Dean mocked the fuck out of him but read it anyway.

He always did, the habit built over the years of checking Sam's homework that he never quite remembered to stop, skimming Sam's neatly written essays at four in the morning still scratching at patches of dried blood behind his ears because showers could happen anytime but Sam left for school at seven on the dot. Virgil's The Aeneid, Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey, Cervantes' Don Quixote: Sam chose French when he went to Stanford, which meant Dean was saved the potential horror of Sam noticing that it lost something in translation and agreeing, yeah, the original is so much better.

(Dean's only excuse for this is spending three months in the southwestern border states after Sam left; more specifically, three months in the colonias on the Texas-Mexico border, where the supernatural could do whatever the fuck it wanted because for reasons Dean can guess, most hunters seemed weirdly oblivious to reports that came from places where the people lived shit lives without running water and didn't do so great with English. If a few dozen people died crossing the border in circumstances weird, no one really seemed to notice or even pretend to care. Necessity makes a kick-ass teacher when it comes to language skills when you're the only person who can help and your first job is to convince them you're not a gun-happy rancher or Sheriff Arpaio's hunter equivalent.

In retrospect, he wonders if this Dean was thinking about that, too, when he went for the boot camp idea. A place that people could find and be taught, any kind of people, because saying that Gordon Walker was representative of hunter diversity would only be accurate if diversity means numbers not much greater than 'one'.)

"I apologize if it seems that I…." Dean tears his gaze away from Sam's name to look at Cas, wondering what the hell is bothering him. "If I shouldn't have…"

"I give up," he admits after a long moment of Cas failing to explain. "Are you apologizing for saving them or reading them? You didn't tell Dean you had them, right?"

"I thought one day he would regret leaving them behind," Cas answers carefully, like maybe he witnessed the death of the Impala and the history inside it. "I don't always understand human sentimentality, however, so I may have been mistaken. Then I was--tied up--and I needed something to do and not in a dead language."

"Cas, tell me you aren't apologizing for reading Sam's books," Dean says blankly. "I mean, I don't even know how to answer that. I don't care. Sam would be thrilled. You'd be geek buddies." He takes a moment; it's not the first time he's had the uncomfortable feeling that if Sam had been the one that Cas saved from Hell, they might have avoided a lot of problems that were entirely of Dean's making when it came to Cas.

"I'm not sure either." Reaching into the box, Dean bites his lip as Cas takes out a tattered copy of The Hobbit with the careful reverence of holy words or powerful ritual magic. "I enjoyed them a great deal. Your brother had excellent taste."

"Total geek," Dean agrees. "I wish you'd known him better. Him and Sam--well, you and Sam, that was before the fork in time thing, right?--started shitty, yeah. It got better."

What Sam would make of Cas, he doesn't know for sure, but one Lord of the Rings reference, and Dean would be stuck in extended edition hell forever in the closest motel Sam could find. Between starting their own Addicts Anonymous for the semi-supernatural, comparing sexcapades with unfortunate partners (remembering Sam's reaction to Dean telling him about the orgies, he made a note then and there never to ask Sam what he got up to in Stanford, ever), and telling Dean all the ways he's an idiot. In alphabetical order, even.

Sam would like him, he realizes; more than anyone, he'd understand what Cas is, caught between two things never meant to go together and still having to somehow make it work; he'd get what Cas lived with every day, how hard it was to fight yourself and the world at the same time. He would have figured out Cas from the first, knew exactly what he was looking at; in some ways, it might have been like looking at himself.

"He'd like you," Dean says impulsively. Cas's head jerks up, expression unreadable, and belatedly it hits him that Sam is Lucifer here; any associations Cas has with Sam Winchester are gonna be traumatic at best. "Uh, I mean my Sam--"

"I assumed you weren't talking about the man currently acting as vessel for Lucifer," Cas interrupts. "That is very--" He hesitates, obviously stuck for just the right word. "--kind of you to say."

"Yeah, I'm known for that, except I'm not. He'd--" Dean figures he might as well go for broke here. "Might not believe this, but you have a lot in common."

Cas looks at Dean like he's wondering if he's running a fever. "Besides unfortunate addictions to dangerous substances?"

"And being geeks," Dean points out. "Dude, just own it already." He needs to talk to Rob about introducing Cas to their D&D nights, come to think; he remembers Sam mentioning he got into that hardcore at Stanford, and God knows Cas needs a few (non-sex, non-drug, non-alcoholic) hobbies.

"I'd like--" Cas cuts himself off, looking surprised at himself, eyes darting to the book in his hand. "Dean wouldn't talk about him. After they separated."

There's a world he never spoke of his brother, a world where all he is to anyone is Lucifer's vessel. There's something obscene about that. "Yeah, I figured as much."

"I want to know about him," Cas says quickly, like he's trying to cut off any opportunity for Dean to refuse. "The time that I knew him was probably not the best time to pursue an acquaintance." His mouth twitches when he looks at Dean. "I was somewhat distracted. I should have--I regret that I didn't attempt to know him better."

Dean swallows; words are hard right now.

"And you," Cas adds slowly, watching Dean warily. "I thought--you always asked me questions about myself, but I wasn't sure I could…if it would be too painful for you."

"You can ask me anything," Dean interrupts roughly. Clearing his throat, he tries again. "No, I'm fine with it. Ask away." A little desperately, he looks back at the box. "So how many of them did you read?"

"All of them," Cas says with a sigh, and Dean makes a mental note to add 'get Cas more books' to the next supply run. "Several times."

Dean keeps his gaze firmly on the box. "What'd you think of Don Quixote?"

"Extremely enjoyable," Cas answers promptly. "Though I wish I could read it in its native language; I feel something was lost in translation."

Dean hides his smile behind a copy of A Time to Kill and adds Don Quixote, in Spanish, to the mental supply list. "No reason. So--"

"Though I'm curious," Cas says in a rush of words, "about what they all have in common. While all of them were interesting, the theme is--somewhat eclectic. To say the least."

"It's called 'High School'," Dean tells him, settling down to explain the Winchester Method of Formal Education (complicated). "Twenty of 'em. We'll start with Sam's freshman year: no lie, the reading was insane."

---

It's the Stars That Lie, 6/12