forthedog | You might as well surrender now, you'll never hold that stance

Entry tags:

darrow,
neil

You might as well surrender now, you'll never hold that stance

He hasn't had a nightmare in a long time. That's not what this is.

He descends into dark places. He falls into deep pits, slides down shafts of steel and stone, goes down and down stairways that extend forever into blackness. There's blood in these dreams, and sharp things and screaming and monsters without faces, but for the most part he regards it all with either simple enjoyment or cool interest. Even the dreams that aren't fun are at least interesting. It's interesting when he's burned, when the flesh is torn off his bones. These things have already happened to him. There's nothing left to be afraid of.

So they aren't nightmares. And he's not even sure this is a dream.

The grass is cool under his feet. Clouds are passing over the moon. The house is behind him, silent and asleep, but the forest is alive with shadows and the lake is a vast pool of ink. His garden, coming in very well, looks colorless and dead. The leaves are whispering, but he knows it's not the leaves.

Yes, he listens to that voice too much, but it's getting so hard to ignore. What it wants. What it's demanding.

Who are you?

He doesn't know anymore. He did.

Past the garden, near the woods and the path down to the lake, he stops, lifting his head. There was a tree here, the girls' tree, the treehouse he promised them now underway with the change in the weather. But it's not there now.

The Tree is there now.

Massive. Black. Wreathed in fire. Its boughs curling down like snakes to tangle with its roots. Pale, howling things are caught in its branches and between its roots he can see clutching, bone-white hands and arms. Bodies swing from it, hanged men. Yggdrasil, only not. Not her Yggdrasil.

His.

This is what's been pulling him. The thing he met down in the ash came from it, was birthed by it, but this is what was truly there, what's been there the whole time. He came from it and he'll go back to it and there's nothing he can do to stop it.

This is not right.

He's not afraid, but this isn't what he wants. Behind him he can feel the feeble tether of the house and what's inside it, but it isn't strong enough. He can't look for help there.

Except he can.

He blinks, and the tree is gone. It's just him, naked in the yard, his feet damp with dew and the breeze sending goosebumps across his skin. He looks down at his hands and half expects to see them blackened and cracked with fire.

This is not sustainable.

He closes his eyes. "Neil."

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I don't sleep. Not in any real sense. I spend hours in the house, sitting or reading or watching TV, but I'm not accustomed to just powering down and waiting for the hours to tick by, like Cas, so I get restless. When I hear him, his voice floating in over the cacophony of others, I'm standing on the beach, letting the tide wash over my bare feet.

But I'm there with him in a moment, standing just behind him. "We makin' a pattern of this?" I ask, voice pitched low, even though there's no one else to overhear, "Standin' in the yard naked?"

"Looks like." He turns. More than anything now he feels sure that he's standing on the edge of something, that he's been there for a while. Too long.

He holds one arm with his other, looking around. The disorientation is fading. He doesn't sleepwalk. He just doesn't ever do that. "I don't remember coming out here."

"That thing that's been pulling at you? Looks like it gave a pretty hard tug."

I flicker in and out of existence, barely longer than a blink, and then I'm standing there with a pair of his sweats, soft and a little too big. I hand them over.

"Yeah." He looks down at the clothing, but doesn't immediately do anything with it. His gaze flickers back to the tree, and just for a moment it's there again, roaring flame, and he knows he's not dreaming. And if he's hallucinating it doesn't mean it's not still there.

He had been hallucinating when the thing inside Dean drugged him. But he's sure that everything he saw that night was real.

"You don't see that, do you."

"The tree? No," I say, knowing what he's thinking without having to ask, in that way I've been able to do for the whole week. It's not a clear case of mind reading, it's just... bits and pieces. The loudest thoughts. The calls for help.

He's basically been doing nothing but shouting for days.

"We can't keep on like this." I take a step forward. "You're broken in pieces. I can see it."

He nods. It's good that Neil at least knows it's there, isn't going to say anything about him being outta his fuckin' mind because sure, he is, but that doesn't mean he's crazy.

Like the tree, if he looks just right, he can just see the shadow of Neil's wings. The moonlight makes this possible.

He smiles thinly. "I guess someday you're gonna get sick of having to save me."

"Nah. I got tired of always bein' the fuckin' damsel," I admit, lifting one shoulder in a shrug with a whisper of rustling feathers.

"Cas said... He said somethin', once, about being able to touch souls. Even do things to mend them, sometimes. What if... What if that would work?"

I take another step closer, and he's just so raw. It's almost too much.

"We could wait. Until Cas has his grace, again. I mean... this can't last much longer."

"And then it would be him?" Behind him, the tree is murmuring things to him, winding its roots into him and pulling him apart. He doesn't want the dark thing in him to go away, strongly suspects that he needs it in order to hold himself together, but the fissures are growing. Even it would agree at this point that something has to be done.

But that way...

"No, I..." All the times like this before, all the times he's shown Neil things he could never let anyone else see. "No, I want it to be you."

"I could end up makin' it worse. Somethin' like that could tear you apart. Like, where you end up scattered across the lawn," I say, reaching out to splay a hand on the center of his chest. Something dark seems to slither away from me, like Spike's demon recoiling from holy objects. In my chest, Castiel's grace is a warm, crackling thing, eager to be let loss.

"I take it back. I am gettin' pretty tired of havin' to do this kinda shit."

"You know that might be better than the alternative." He hasn't said it out loud and he still isn't, but he knows Neil must be able to feel what he means in the most visceral way possible. Neil has laid out the consequences, his leaving, but they both know it probably wouldn't stop at that. He wouldn't be able to just walk away.

He takes a breath; he can already feel it, the potential of it, and he drops the pants; he doesn't need them now anyway. He laughs softly, his head tipped back. It's not his throat, but he can feel the same kind of thing stealing over him, like his ribcage is opening under Neil's hand. "You knew what you were getting into."

"Did I?" I say, giving him a skeptical look, because I don't really remember this being in the vows. And what I might've understood, when he first turned up in the city, didn't really encompass the depth of shit that he's carrying around with him now.

"I don't even really know what I'm supposed to do. I mean, I know I can... I can reach out and just touch it, sorta. But... I dunno what the fuck I'm supposed to do, from there."

But maybe it's an instinctual sort of thing. Maybe we're both just fucked.

"So just do it." A little desperate now. It's probably not true, probably his imagination, but he's beginning to feel as if he has only moments before something tips him over into a place from which he might not be able to return. Everything he's grasping at to keep himself here and whole - Neil's teeth on his throat, hand around his neck, claiming him from everything else, but what's dragging him away doesn't respect that kind of claim.

It's like the fire. Like greeting the sun.

He reaches up and lays his hand over Neil's, like he can push it into him. "You need me to review our options? Really? It can't be Cas, I don't have that kind of time."

"Fuck you, Mike," I hiss, angry at the idea that he's got some kind of fuckin' expiration date. Mike seems to exist in a state of fuckin' emergency, these days, doin' shit without takin' the time to consider the consequences. This is no different.

"I need you to think about what you're askin' me, instead of tellin' me what to do, like you don't got any control over what you do tomorrow. It's bullshit."

There's a growing hum around us, big black shadows of wings cast in sharp relief by a glowing blueish light seeping from my pores.

Curling my free hand around the back of his neck, I push forward, and it's like whatever makes us both solid, both separate, fades away. I flow into him, angry light and heat, filling up around the broken black shards of what he's been carrying around with him all this time.

It's not until I'm already elbow deep that I realize somebody's screaming.

He's not sure what he expected, and then it doesn't matter.

For a fraction of a second he's thinking of the fire, but then it's nothing like the fire at all. The fire had just been on him. This is in him, blasting through every cell and into a part of him he knows goes beyond his heart or his brain, the place where everything is broken. It's teeth on his throat, in his throat; it's his throat torn out, his ribcage exploded open and Neil's hand around his heart. It's agony beyond everything he's ever felt.

It's wonderful.

He thinks he might be screaming but he can't be sure. His awareness has folded inward to where Neil is knitting the fragments of him back together, the seams closing, everything brilliant fury.

He's not sure he can take another second of it, and he's not sure he ever wants it to end.

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, so I just feel my way through it, filling up the little cracks-- the dark, bloody parts of him, growing like a putrid cancer. I can't fix it all, I can't make it shiny and new, but I can feel something shift back into place again. The brighter parts of him, that were buried under all that shit, surge up to touch the warmth of all that light, and the grace might be borrowed, but I don't feel that way. It's him and me, right in this moment, and no one else. The way it was always meant to be.

But the shrill hum of grace, the heat of it, the power, starts to tremble out of control, and with a gasp, I pull back, the grace rushing back into its temporary vessel like a tide.

He doesn't know when it ends. It's just suddenly over, all the pain vanishing in an instant, and everything else with it. The feeling of nothing at all between him and Neil, not even skin, not even flesh and bone, a kind of communion he hasn't even really dared to dream about. Not perfect, but so good. Beyond anything.

And then gone.

He's not hurting, and he feels whole in a way he's not sure he's been in months, but he also feels empty, completely bereft, and his legs fold under him and he goes down on his knees in the grass, staring up. At the sky, at the moon, at Neil haloed by its light and at the shadows of his wings.

"God, Neil."

Edited 2014-06-21 03:57 (UTC)

I sink down to the grass with him, because I feel a little like my batteries have been drained... and because I'm not ready to break that connection with him, just yet.

Sitting on my knees in the grass, I frame his face in my hands, and I don't really know what I've done, but whatever it was, I can look in his eyes and I know that it worked.

I pull him forward, pressing my lips to his forehead and letting out a shuddering breath. "So, not a bad idea, I guess."

He doesn't answer, not immediately. Neil touches him and he shivers, violently, but it's more like the aftershock of an orgasm than anything else. A ghost of what he had felt before, probably only his imagination.

Probably.

He leans forward against Neil, practically against his chest, and while he's always liked how Neil feels smaller in his arms, now it's his turn. And of course he doesn't hate it.

"So. I'm not all over the lawn."

"Yeah, that would've sucked," I murmur, my hand working through his hair. "I mean, how the fuck do you even clean somethin' like that up?"

My lips against his forehead, his temple, his cheek, the bridge of his nose, I ask, "How you feelin'?"

He draws a breath to answer - and then realizes he has no idea how to put it into words, no idea if the words even exist, and still no words for what he's just felt. He could say that he feels like he used to, except that's not true. This wasn't just a refitting of broken pieces or the application of some glue. The healing - whatever it was - is almost incidental.

It's deeper than that.

"It's quiet," he whispers, and he's not even sure what that means, but it doesn't matter, because seconds later a sob is catching in his throat and he turns his head against Neil's neck, his eyes burning.

"Okay," I whisper, hauling him closer, a part of me wanting to shove my way back inside him again, already missing the connection. But the grace isn't mine, and it seems like a misuse of it, burning it out for what amounts to a soul fuck.

"Okay, you're okay," I murmur, my fingers carding mindlessly through his hair, "I got you."

He's known it for a long time. He's not sure he's ever known it in quite this way, felt it quite like this. There's being possessed and then there's being possessed, and while he might have cracked himself open and let something awful inside, that thing doesn't rule him. It doesn't make the rules.

So what he's doing now isn't really weeping. That implies effort, tension. He has no strength left for either. His breath comes easy and deep and he settles against the shelter of Neil's body.

"Yeah," he breathes after a moment. "I am. You do."

We're both quiet for a long time, sitting in the damp, early morning grass. But when I glance up, I see the curtains in Mack and Flo's window move, and I breathe out a sigh, pressing another kiss to Mike's temple and saying, "I think we've got an audience."

He raises his head, follows Neil's gaze, lets out a soft breath of a laugh. "Shit." Yet something else for them to work through in all the therapy they'll undoubtedly need someday.

There's no way to explain what's happened. He's not sure how to explain it to himself.

Scrubbing at his face, he pulls back slightly, one hand on his chest like he expects to feel some evidence there. "God, that really fucking hurt."

"Sorry," I say, grinning a little blearily, 'cause I can already tell it was worth it. Pain or not, some of the desperation has bled out of him, that haunted and dangerous look in his eyes, and maybe it's not a perfect fix, but it sure as hell's a start.

"Come on, we better head upstairs," I say, resting a hand on his arm, "You wanna walk, or you want me to take us?"

"No, you don't understand." He takes hold of Neil's wrist, then because it's not enough, he slides his hand up and cups Neil's face, and for just a moment he thinks he doesn't need a hand on his soul; everything in there will simply burst out through his skin. "It was amazing. You don't..." He tilts his head back to the sky for a few seconds, swallowing. "You don't know what I'd give to feel pain like that again."

He starts to push himself up, then the world turns a bit sideways and he subsides, one hand on his head. "Uh. Maybe you better."

"Yeah, I kinda do, but I still gotta cut you off. Any more and you really will be splattered across the lawn," I say, leaning forward to press my lips against his forehead again, and with the contact, I'm able to carry us both upstairs, into our room.

We land in a relatively comfortable heap on the bed.

"Might be worth it," he starts to whisper, and he's mostly kidding, mostly, but then there's a mattress under him, his bare feet still wet from the grass, still curled into Neil's arms.

"God." He'll never get used to it. He never wants to. He lifts his head, nuzzles at Neil's jaw. "Think they're okay, or should one of us make sure they're not too freaked out?"

"I'll go. Just hold tight," I murmur, even though it's an effort to push him away, practically spilling him out boneless on the sheets.

I'm gone in a blink, the air just barely disturbed around me. As soon as my feet land on the floor, the girls are on me, their eyes red-rimmed with sleep and worry.

"He's fine, we're fine, it's okay," I promise them, herding them back towards their bed, but unfortunately, I can already tell it's gonna take me a few minutes to get 'em settled again.

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You might as well surrender now, you'll never hold that stance

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