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100 Words to Paint a Picture

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If Dean had to choose two words to describe Purgatory, he'd pick dark and silent. Ominously silent. It's neither of those things right now, though, because there's an angel above him, twisting and screaming and bleeding blindingly white grace through deep tears in his flesh. It was a trap, a hunting trap, a barbed wire circlet they'd not seen until it was too late, closing around Castiel's leg and dragging him upside down into the air, dangling from a tree. As Dean watches, the wire bites deeper, Castiel screams louder, wings flaring wildly – and the silence begins to close in.

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Here are the things Sam remembers about the Cage: pain, grace-bright flare through closed eyelids, blood, thick smell of blood, smell of fear, sulphur and dirt, tears, knife flash through split skin.

Here are the things Sam doesn’t remember about the Cage: feathers, Michael’s fury, angel grace-blood, Lucifer screaming, flare of wings around him and through him, protection, cold of the Devil pressed shaking against his side, soft touches, slow kisses and the touch of fingers, “you are perfect,” and, “let me hold you.”

Here is the thing Sam will never remember from the Cage: “Don’t leave me, Samuel. Please.”

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Usually, when Crowley wants to get Aziraphale to do something, he first gets him drunk. But it doesn’t seem fair for the angel to have his first taste of food whilst intoxicated, so Crowley begs and pleads and wheedles until, finally, Aziraphale relents. He bites into the fruit, sticky juice on his lips and the sharp crunch of skin beneath his teeth. It’s a perfect apple, sweet and crisp and delicious and, slowly, Aziraphale nods his approval. Crowley smiles encouragingly, watches him take another bite, and quietly decides it might be best not to say where the apple came from.

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The pain’s not exactly pain, to be honest – not at first, anyway. It’s an emptiness between his ears, a hollowness at his temples. It’s a sense of aloneness that escalates into violent, screaming silence that drops him to his knees, hands tangled in his hair, breath choking in his lungs and hearts racing because he can’t hear them. Because they’re gone, they’re all gone, he’ll never hear them again, and it’s all his fault. But Amy crouches down and presses her forehead to his, Rory traces patterns on the back of his neck, and slowly, he remembers how to breathe.

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Castiel’s not watching the camera. He’s focused, hawk-like and with that familiar half-tilt to his head, on the game below. Dean explained some of the basics on the way there, so Castiel could follow long but, judging by the angel’s expression, not much of it sunk in. It’s only because he’s watching Castiel more than the game that he notices when the camera zooms in on them – or, more likely, the giggling pair beside them. But it pauses, just for second, which is enough time for Dean to think  screw it . Castiel tastes of ozone and surprise, and Dean grins.

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They don’t forget Adam. They keep in touch, through his childhood and adolescence, visiting him whenever they drop by to see Anathema and Newt. In return, Adam emails them – rather, emails Crowley and writes to Aziraphale, because the angel still doesn’t trust computers.

And then, when Adam’s seventeen, it starts again. Heaven and Hell don’t know how to quit, Michael and Lucifer itching to fight. Aziraphale and Crowley try to protect Adam from it, bit when Aziraphale arrives on Adam’s doorstep with a limp, bloody heap of flesh and feathers in his arms, the antichrist’s eyes darken.

This means war.

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He’s fairly sure they’ve abandoned him now. Abandoned him to Lucifer’s silver tongue and quick fingers, and Michael’s (not so) tender mercies.

There was someone, once, a stranger that came to steal Sam’s light after the angel took his body. Both left Adam screaming, “Take me too,” clawing at the bars of the cage as the archangels dragged him back down chunk by bloody chunk.

Now, though, it’s too much effort to scream – it just encourages them, so he’s silent as Lucifer rips and rends and tears, before handing his mauled body over for Michael to use as he wishes.

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There’s a dead angel on Bobby’s doorstep.

“…Cas?” whispers Dean, dropping to his knees next to the corpse and touching its shoulder; a second later, he’s recoiling as flies swarm out of the mouth and eye sockets, buzzing around the swollen, rotting body.

Usually, Dean’s fine with week-old corpses, but this is Cas, with blood dried all over him and smeared down the door where Cas scrabbled at it, desperate, dying, bleeding out, and when Dean realises he can see a D-e-a amongst the smears-

“Dean?” asks Bobby slowly, and Dean groans, “Cas,” before he’s throwing up over the blood.

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The garden is not what it was. Where there was once lush, fine greenery, there is now withered stalks – brown, dry fingers reaching towards a darkened sky. Lucifer wants to cry for the ruin of this, what was once his home, his first and only home, but he doesn’t. He won’t.

“Come away, now, brother,” murmurs Michael from behind him. “Now is not the time to fix it.” Reluctantly, Lucifer turns and takes his hand – and, as they walk out of the garden together, flowers bloom in their footsteps and the storm clouds clear where their wings brush the sky. 

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When it finally clicks, the world seems to slow, jerk and shudder like a scratched DVD as it struggles to reassert itself, to align itself with reality again. Sherlock. Sherlock is not here, Sherlock is going after Moriarty, Sherlock is going to do something stupid, Sherlock is, Sherlock is-

It feels like the traffic’s never crawled slower, like he’s never been stuck in a cab for longer, and when he stumbles out of it as it finally, finally reaches St. Barts his heart feels like it’s trying to tear its way out of his chest. And then he looks up-

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“Do you remember when we used to be like them?” sighs Aziraphale, leaning against Crowley as they watch Dean and Castiel bickering over the other side of the room.
Crowley frowns. “I know I, for one, was never like either of them,” he sniffs. “I was far more intelligent and attractive.”
Aziraphale snorts, and elbows him gently. “You know what I mean.”
“Enthusiastic?”
“I was going more for oblivious, but that too,” admits Aziraphale, snuggling closer.
“Hey, who’re you callin’ oblivious?” calls Dean from across the room.
It’s not Crowley, but Castiel, that answers. “You,” he says, and kisses him.

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It should be raining. It should be thundering, storming, the heavens should be roaring their fury, because Aziraphale is lying in a pool of blood on the floor with a hole through his chest, and it doesn’t seem right for the sun to be shining. Crowley’s shaking, outright trembling, as he drops to his knees next to the angel. “It’s okay,” he whispers, conjuring a blade of his own from the air, “it’s going to be okay.” Then he’s dragging the blade down the length of his forearm, pressing it to Aziraphale’s chest, and praying that his life is enough.

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To say that Gabriel crashed back into their lives would be entirely accurate. He fell, dropped into the road before them and lay there limp and bloody, shattered wings wrapped around him in a cocoon. Sam cradled him in his arms that day, and ever since – metaphorically. The archangel doesn’t take well to coddling, but Sam’s unable to help himself. Gabriel looks so… small. Fragile. Not that he doesn’t know Gabriel is far stronger than he is, but when Gabriel looks at him sometimes, head tilted towards the sky, all Sam can see is vulnerability. And it breaks his heart.

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The number of people who are aware that John Watson, at the tender age of fourteen, knows how to hotwire a car is zero. The same as the number of people who know that he can pick locks and use his dad’s air rifle, that he owns a knife and two switchblades. It’s not like he ever does anything – never steals, never always returns the cars he drives, has never used the knives on anyone – but it’s the thrill of it, the adrenaline. Knowing he could, if he wanted to, and that no one would be able to stop him.

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“And this,” says Gabriel, gesturing to a large picture framed in what looks like a golden window arch, “is me. Literally. I modelled for him. Great dude, wonderful appreciation for the… human form.”
Sam ignores the leer Gabriel’s directing at him and studies the painting slowly, resisting the urge to reach out and drag his fingers down the flaking paint.
“It’s beautiful,” he murmurs softly, and Gabriel looks mildly uncomfortable, glancing anywhere but at Sam’s face. “But, seriously – pink?!” asks the hunter, wrinkling his nose.
“Yeeeeah, that might have been a mistake. Piece of advice, Sammy; never try dip-dying wings.”