Born on Wings of Steel

"Without my wings you know I'd surely die

I found my freedom."



Dean woke up with sunlight warming his face.  For a moment, he was waking up in his bedroom, Saturday morning cartoons waiting to be watched on the t.v. downstairs, the smell of his mother's pancakes wafting through the house.  Then, he took in the dingy hotel room around him.  Sighing, he reached over and slapped off the radio clock alarm.

Dean sat up and rubbed his face, wincing at the injured fingers he had forgotten about.  Waking up was often a process of rediscovering the previous day's bodily damage.

Throwing  back the covers, Dean swung his legs over the side of the bed, stretching.  Actually, he had slept pretty good.  It felt like he'd gotten more than his usual restless four hours.  Yawning, he stood up and scratched his stomach, noting the healthy-sized morning hard-on tenting the front of his boxers.  He'd take care of it in the shower.  Shuffling into the doorless bathroom, he turned on the shower and took a quick pee while the water heated up.

Stepping into the shower, Dean pulled the mildew-spotted curtain closed and stood under the spray of warm water.  For a moment, he let the spray hit his neck and shoulders, loosening perpetually knotted muscles, then he grabbed the bar of soap and started lathering up.  Because of his injured fingers, he decided to wank off left-handed.  He gave it a few easy, soapy strokes as he mentally tossed around erotic images, then he remembered the hot waitress from the diner last night.

He pictured the waitress bent forward over the table, panties around her ankles, skirt hiked up to her waist.  Pressing his right palm against the tile, he braced his feet a little wider as he stroked faster.  The girl's waist thickened, back becoming broader, and Dean was screwing a naked guy on the table.  

His stroking faltered, then resumed.  Not that he was a regular switch-hitter, but he'd had sex with guys before.  He loved women: the contrast of their softness against the hard planes of his own body, their scent, the little involuntary sounds in his ear when he hit the right spot.  But, being with a woman required a certain amount of restraint.  There were times, especially when a hunt went real bad, that he needed the release of sex, but didn't trust himself to be gentle enough.  That was usually when he'd bat for the other team.

So, when the wank fantasy turned into guy sex, he went with the flow, hips rocking forward as he moved towards orgasm.  At the moment of release, he let his forehead rest again the tile, and Cas' face flashed through his mind.

"What the hell?"

Dean's eyes snapped open.  He frowned as he rinsed off the wall and quickly shampooed his hair.  That was weird.  Maybe because he had thought of Cas and the brothel last night?  

Turning off the water, he stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel, briskly drying off.  He wrapped the towel around his waist and used another one to rub his face and hair dry, slinging it around his neck.  He stood in front of the sink, squirting a dollop of shaving cream into his left palm, and smoothed it over his lower face and neck.  He carefully started shaving, holding the razor awkwardly with his injured fingers.

Finished, he bent down and rinsed off his face, straightening and patting dry with the towel around his neck.  In the mirror, he caught the reflection of the hand print burn on his upper arm, and he hesitated.

When Cas had brought him back, all of Dean's scars had been healed, and he was left with only this one.  It was like all those years of being clawed and slashed open and beaten to crap had never happened.  Reaching across his chest, Dean traced the edges of the raised scar with his fingertips.

He wondered where Cas was right now, and how the finding God gig was going.

---

Invisible, Castiel watched the pilgrims finish the kora, the walk around the Jokhang temple, marked by four large stone incense burners at each of the corners, then enter the square and begin praying and prostrating themselves in front of the temple.  The sky curved over the gilded bronze tiled roof like an overturned blue bowl, the edge trimmed by the misty, purple-grey Kunlun mountains.  Along the eastern side of the yard, rows of votive candles created a path into the main hall, but Castiel was not taking that path.  He was here to see a dying Tibetan monk, in one of the inner shrines closed off to the general public, where only the most venerable were allowed to enter.

Without natural light, the inside of the shrine was lit only by candles, and the air was thick with smoke and incense.  An older monk, bald head bent forward, sat in lotus position before a golden statue of the Buddha, red robes draping his thin frame.  Behind a screen at the back of the small room, several rows of monks chanted softly, touching their foreheads to the ground in unison.

Castiel nodded to the Reaper standing a respectful distance by one of the carved pillars.  The Reaper, dressed in traditional monk garb, bowed, raising pressed palms to his forehead.  The monk's death must be imminent.  Castiel sank into a cross-legged seating position in front of the monk, trenchcoat spreading out on the floor around him.  The monk raised his head and opened eyes milky with cataracts, but the tilt of his head made it obvious he was aware of Castiel's presence.

"I must find someone," Castiel said in Tibetan.

"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth," the monk's voice was thin as rice paper.

"With respect," Castiel said, leaning forward in his urgency.  "I cannot wait for Him to reveal Himself."

The monk's spine bowed, and his chin dropped to his chest.  Castiel opened his mouth to speak, but the Reaper placed a hand on his shoulder.  When Castiel looked up, the monk's soul was standing next to the Reaper, the body in front of him now an empty shell.

"I need to know where to look," Castiel insisted.

The monk smiled and raised one hand in front of his chest.  "The way is not in the sky.  The way is in the heart."

Before Castiel could say anything else, the Reaper and the monk bowed and disappeared.

The words brought back a memory of riding in the car with Dean.

"I do know a little something about missing fathers," Dean said.

"What do you mean?" Castiel asked with a frown.

"I mean there were times when I was looking for my dad when all logic said he was dead.  But I knew, in my heart, that he was still alive. "

A hot flash passed through Castiel's chest, and his fingers flew to the pendant, thinking for a moment he was near his father, then he realized what it was.  Dean was injured and in danger.  With a brief sound of fluttering wings, Castiel vanished.

Tensed for action, Castiel appeared in the hotel room, but it was empty.  Instinctively, he reached out for Dean, only to be blocked by the Enochian sigils he himself had carved on Dean's ribs to hide him.  Castiel reached into his trenchcoat pocket and pulled out the cell phone Dean had given him.

"I put my number on speed dial," Dean had explained, tossing him the phone from where he had been unpacking a duffel bag.

"What is speed dial?" Castiel asked, turning the phone over in his hands.

Dean took the phone back, flipped it open, and pointed to number three.

"Cas, just remember D is for Dean," he said.

Standing alone in the deserted hotel room, Castiel pressed number three.  The phone rang once, twice, then three times without an answer.

---

It was turning out to be a hot, humid morning and Dean was grateful he could wear "field" clothes instead of a monkey suit today.  Inside the park ranger's office, the only evidence of air conditioning was a loud hum and the stirring of ropy dust tendrils hanging off the vents.  His cell phone went off, and Dean dug it out of his pocket, flipping it open.

"Hey."  Dean turned away from the milling visitors and pretended to study a series of historic wildlife photos on the wall.

"I think I got a bead on what you might be hunting," Bobby said.  "It's called a Stymphalian Bird."

"What the hell is that?" Dean lowered his voice when a mother toting two kids threw him a glare.

"According to Greek mythology, a flock of man-eating birds that Hercules destroyed as his sixth labor," Bobby sounded as if he were reading from a book.

"You're kidding.  I gotta be Kevin Sorbo now?"  Dean rubbed his forehead.  "Okay, so how do I kill it?"

"Well, according to the legend, Hercules scared them up out of the grass with a rattle, then shot them with a bow."

"That's it?"  Dean shrugged even though Bobby couldn't see him.  "I got a crossbow in the Impala right now."

"One more thing," Bobby said, just as Dean was about to end the call.

"Isn't there always?" Dean asked, eyebrow rising.

"Those metal feathers, they can shoot them like projectiles."

"Awesome."

"Dr. Hetfield?"

Dean turned around as a man in brown pants with a Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge badge on the shoulder of his tan, short-sleeved shirt entered the front office.  The plastic name tag pinned above his breast pocket read Troy Akselrod.

"I'll call you later, Bobby," Dean said quickly, then shut the phone and slipped it into his front pants' pocket.

"Yes."  Dean stuck out his hand.  "Thank you for seeing me."

As soon as they shook hands and Dean looked into Akselrod's eyes, his Spidey Sense started tingling.  Even in the heat, Akselrod's hand was clammy, and he only held Dean's gaze for a few seconds before sliding away.  When Dean followed Akselrod into his office, the tingling became full-fledged alarm bells.

The office was decorated with pictures and specimens of exotic creatures.  Some looked real, some fake:  A two-headed snake, double-faced lamb, a unicorn goat, a hairy fish, something that looked like a cross between a mini kangaroo and a rat, a giant lizard skeleton.  Noticing his scrutiny, Akselrod cleared his throat and gestured around the room.

"My hobby is cryptozoology," he said.  "You know, the study of hidden animals."

"Uh huh."  Dean's eyes narrowed, and he remained standing as Akselrod took a seat behind his desk.

"S-so, here's a map showing where the, uh, incidents occurred."  

Akselrod pushed a map with two red circles across the desk.  His hands were shaking, and Dean knew.  This was the guy in the security video.  This dillhole had brought some kind of monster bird here from who knows where and now people were dead.  Anger flared inside him.  Every day he had to deal with monsters, and when people like this ignorant ass did something stupid, it just made Dean's job that much harder.

"As I told the sheriff," Akselrod began.  "It might have been a large predator bird in the raptor family..."

"Cut the crap," Dean said curtly.

He leaned down with one fist on the desk as Akselrod looked up at him, startled.

"I know."  Dean paused.  "You're the one who brought that monster Hercules bird here."

Akselrod stood up abruptly, his chair falling over backwards with a loud clatter.  Staff and visitors in the front room looked over at them through the large glass window.

"I-I," Akselrod stuttered.

"Where is it?" Dean demanded.

"I told the guard not to open the crate."  Akselrod babbled, eyes bulging.  "I told him."

"Where is it now?"  Dean persisted, ignoring the alarmed voices behind him.

"It escaped."  Akselrod's frightened stare shifted past Dean's right shoulder.

"I've called the police, Troy," the receptionist said, stepping into the office.

Dean glanced at her, then snatched the map off the desk, roughly folding it and shoving it in his back pocket.

"People are dead because of you, asshat," Dean growled before striding out of the room.

 

---

Squatting down, Dean gathered a handful of pebbles and dropped them into the empty soda can.  He gave it a few shakes, and smiled at the sound.

"Rattle.  Check."

Standing, he adjusted the strap on the crossbow slung over his shoulder.

"Bow.  Check."

He walked around to the front of the Impala and double-checked his position on the map spread out on the hood and held in place with rocks.  The Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge was 34,000 acres, but fortunately, all of the attacks had taken place near a wildlife-watching platform off Frozen Point road in the marsh near East Bay.  He wasn't going to have to trek far from the Impala.

"Time for the turkey shoot," Dean muttered, stepping off the road into the knee-high grass in the bordering ditch.

 

Two hours later, Dean was sweating, covered in bug bites and splattered in stinky mud up to his thighs as he slogged his way through marshland.  He tried shortening his stride, but it really didn't seem to help as the ground sucked in his boots and he almost lost his balance again.  The last thing he wanted was to face-plank in this muck.

"Damn it."  

Dean jerked his foot free and stood resting for a moment, slowly sinking.  Walking in this crap was exhausting.  His legs ached.  Lifting the binoculars off his chest, he looked around, twisting at the waist, but didn't see anything.  Holding the binoculars to his eyes with his left hand, he shook the rattle with his right.   In a flurry of white wings, a group of wading birds flew up, along with a few other smaller birds.  He waited a moment, then lowered the binoculars.

With a loud squawking cry that sounded like one of the herons on steroids mixed with a goose, the grass less than six feet in front of Dean exploded.  Unable to pull his feet free, Dean's arms wind-milled as he lost his balance and he fell on his ass with a loud splat.   Wind gusted on his face, and flapping above him with a strange chiming, chaffing sound, was a giant bird, gleaming gold and copper in the sun, the backs of its wings black.  It had a long, curved neck and a mask like a swan.

It cried out again, a shiver ran along its wings, and two gleaming projectiles flew at him.  Dean raised one arm over his face and felt a metal feather bite deep into his forearm, another one hitting the wet ground by his leg.  Dean slung the cocked crossbow around and fell onto his back, pulling a bolt out of his boot.  Setting the bolt in place, he aimed and pulled the trigger.  The bolt struck the bird high in the chest, to the right.  Instead of dropping dead, this seemed to piss it off, and a flurry of feather knives sliced through the grass and mud around Dean, another one piercing his thigh.

He managed to jerk his uninjured leg free to brace the bow for another pull, but the bird rose up in a gust of wind and flew off.  Sitting up, Dean wrapped his hand in the bottom of his shirt and carefully pulled out the feathers in his arm and thigh.  They looked like deep knife wounds, and immediately started bleeding profusely.  Pulling out the Swiss Army knife, he cut off strips of his shirt and made rough bandages.  Using the bow as a brace, he levered himself up out of the mud and managed to get to his feet.  Dean took two lurching steps, and sank up to his hips.  He realized he was actually in a murky, shallow pond, entrenched in mud up to his knees.  The pond had been completely hidden since it was densely populated with marsh grass.

Gritting his teeth, Dean tried to pull his injured leg free, tugging at his leg with his hands.  If he could just make it to that log over there, maybe the ground would be more solid.  Suddenly, the log moved, and he realized it was actually a partially submerged alligator watching him.

Slowly, Dean slid his hand down his leg into the water, then the mud, feeling for the remaining two crossbolts.  There was nothing in his boot.  Reluctantly, he broke his stare with the alligator to look around at the brackish water.  If he'd lost the other two in here, they were metal, so they would have sunk straight to the bottom.  Just then, the alligator slid silently the rest of the way into the water and disappeared with a burbling ripple.

"Awesome," Dean said grimly.

Keeping the cross bow in his left hand to use as a potential shield/battering weapon, Dean pulled out the Bowie knife tucked against the small of his back inside his jeans.  That was when his cell phone rang.

"What the-"

For a moment, Dean almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation, then he slung the crossbow over his shoulder and dug out his cell.

"Dean, where are you?" Cas' low voice asked.

"The Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge in Galveston, Texas," Dean said quickly.  "The marsh near Frozen Point road.  Cas, hur-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Dean felt a hand grip his right upper arm.   He looked up at Cas squatting in his trenchcoat at the edge of the pond, the sun haloed behind him, his face cast into shadow.  Without speaking, Cas pulled on Dean's arm, and a submerged memory dislodged.

Naked and alone, Dean huddled in the corner of his windowless cell during one of the brief respites between torture sessions.  He believed Alastair permitted these breaks only because of the anticipated dread of returning and the time it gave him to miss Sam and Bobby.  Dean squeezed his eyes shut and tried to blank out his mind.  The only way to get through these times was to not thing of anything.  Just be blank.  Be nothing.

A hole dilated open above his head, and Dean flinched away from it.  Not yet.  He couldn't go back yet.

"Dean."  A voice he didn't recognized called him.

He peered upwards, and had to squint.  An undefined figure hung there, surrounded by shifting tendrils of light that he couldn't quite look at straight on.

"You're a new kind of demon," Dean croaked.  He was perpetually thirsty.

"I am an angel of the Lord," the light responded.

Dean laughed, but it came out more like a choked cough.  "Right."

"You have been chosen, Dean.  It is time to depart this wretched place."

This was the dirtiest trick they'd played on so far.  But, as long as he was talking to this "angel", he didn't have to go back to the torture room.

"I made a deal," Dean said.  "I can't leave."

"Lucifer cannot bind souls to Hell," the angel said.  "Only the weight of your own guilt chains you to this prison."

Dean frowned.  That made no sense.  "I don't get it."

"Set aside your burden, and you will be free.  Make haste, Dean.  My presence here has not gone unnoticed."

The problem was, Dean didn't know how to set down the burden.  Since he was four years old and had carried Sammy in his arms out of their burning home, he had held the burden.  He was responsible for his family, and for all the innocents whose lives depended on him beating the bad guys.  Every failure that resulted in pain or lost a life, that was on him.

"I will not be able to reach you again," the angel said.  "We must depart now."

Taking a deep breath, Dean let go.  He felt a great weight lift and suddenly he was so light, it felt like he could float.  He stood up.

"What's your name?" he asked the light.

"Castiel."

Then the angel reached down to grip his arm, and there was a blaze of pain as Dean was lifted out of Hell.

Cas tugged and Dean was pulled free of the marsh.  Except, with the knife in one hand and the cell phone in the other, he had no way to brace himself, and he fell forward.  Dean grunted as he landed not on grassy mud, but on the hard surface of a gravel road in the shadow of the parked Impala.  Cas remained squatted next to him, holding his arm.

Between being unexpectedly teleported from the marsh to the road and the flashback, Dean was hit with a wave of vertigo.  Closing his eyes, he pressed a fist to his forehead and waited for the dizziness to subside.  The memory of Cas rescuing him from Hell had been completely lost in the confusion of returning to Earth.  Dean wasn't sure how to process it, so he shoved it into the room with all the other stuff he tried not to analyze, and shut the door.  The hinges were creaking a bit with the strain from the over-stuffed room, but Dean needed to keep his main head space clear to deal with the here and now.  He didn't have time for introspective crap.

"I apologize for transporting you without permission," Cas said.  "I hope it does not interfere with your ability to poop."

Lowering his hand, Dean looked up into Cas' sincere face.  He laughed and sat up.  Whenever Cas was with him, he felt the load lighten.  He didn't need to worry about the angel like he worried about Sam.

"Just to be sure, we're driving back to the hotel," Dean said.

He let Cas pull him to his feet, and he hobbled over to the driver's side of the Impala.  Opening the door, Dean hesitated, glancing down at his muddy and bloodied clothes.  With a grimace, he slid inside.

"Sorry, Baby," he apologized.  "I'll clean it up later."

Cas shut the door on the passenger side, and they drove in silence to the hotel.

---

Note:  Song Lyrics are from "Icarus" and "Wheels" by Kansas