Chapter Text
In the week since that uncomfortable midnight discussion the night of their return from the fat camp, Dean had been trying to avoid antagonizing Sam any further. He stayed to his room, the kitchen, and the garage, while Sam took over the library, researching the last batch of angel tablet translations Kevin had left unfinished.
The only time they interacted, Dean brought Sam breakfast and dinner. He kept the kid fed because, left on his own, Sammy would have just kept right on working until he dropped. As it was, Dean found Sam slumped in one of the leather club chairs tucked into an alcove, book on his chest, feet up on an ottoman, snoring like a sawmill, more than one morning the past week. But Dean didn’t say anything. They weren’t supposed to be brothers where work was concerned, so Dean just made sure Sam ate and left it at that.
He worked on the Impala, tuning the engine, rotating the tires, testing the brakes. Once she was purring like a kitten, he cleaned her up. He loved the sound of the vacuum, picking up pine needles and gravel out of the footwells. He reveled in the smell of Windex and Armorall as he cleaned windows, seats, and the dash. Turtle Wax induced a kind of euphoria though he wasn’t entirely sure if that was the shine it left on the Impala’s black finish or the fact that he used it in an enclosed space. And after the Impala was taken care of and put to bed, he turned his attention to the other cars in the garage, the cars the Men of Letters had left behind.
The last Man of Letters had left the bunker before 1960, and the garage reflected that abandonment. Tools had been carefully stowed and the cars parked and left as carefully and tidily as the bunker proper, but more than fifty years of disuse had had their effect on the whole, more so than in the library, the kitchen, or even the communications room.
Rubber gaskets had dried and cracked. Batteries that hadn’t simply gone dead had leaked and corroded. Tires had gone flat and in several cases the weight of the car had flattened rims over time. At least one radiator had rusted through. Windows and leather seats had discolored and over everything a fine coat of dust had combined with the grease and oil present in even the cleanest garage, forming a nearly impenetrable film over every car. Motorcycles had fared little better though they had been covered with sheets. (Dean had a difficult time imagining his grandfather tooling around Kansas on a then brand-new Indian.)
He spent most of his time just cataloging the damage that time had inflicted and prioritizing which cars needed what repairs. The Men of Letters had kept meticulous records on the cars and Dean delighted in the degree of detail he found and the ease with which he could use the format they had developed. With Sam in the library, Dean took over the kitchen table, stacking ledger books for each car in two neat piles against the wall, pulling a book off one, reading through it, and making his own notes before stowing the finished ledger on the other pile and moving onto the next.
It made for quiet days. Lonely too. Sam worked in the other room, but he might as well have been working in the Library of Congress for all the companionship they offered one another. Except for a distracted “Thanks” when he brought Sam a plate, Sam said nothing. He didn’t seem angry, which was a good thing as far as Dean was concerned, because Sam had been pissed that night they’d nearly fought.
And maybe that was what bothered Dean the most. They hadn’t really fought. They’d talked and voices had been raised and tempers had flared, but all the wind had gone out of both their sails when Sam had said that he wouldn’t do anything like Dean had done for Sam in order to save Dean’s life. As Dean stood there, stumped for what to say, Sam sighed, got up, said good night and went to bed. The next morning, when Dean woke up, Sam was already elbows deep in research, so Dean made breakfast and stayed out of his brother’s way.
Now he stood on the top step, leaning against one of the columns, cup of coffee in hand, watching Sam. Poring over books spread out across the table, tapping his laptop, brow furrowed as he worked so damned hard to unravel what Kevin should still be here doing. Dean couldn’t help but look to the spot on the other side of the table, the spot where Gadreel, in Sam’s body, had killed the prophet. He still saw Kevin’s body, eyes burned out, mouth open in betrayed surprise, unaware that Sam was angel-possessed, believing as he died that Sam had been the one to kill him.
Lost in his own thoughts, Dean started when Sam yelled his name with some urgency.
“Yeah, Sam,” he said quietly.
Sam looked up, his eyes a little wild, obviously not aware that Dean had been so close. Dean walked down the stairs, watching his brother.
“Find something?” Dean asked, knowing by Sam’s expression that he’d found something that had profoundly disturbed him.
Sam sat back and took a deep breath, visibly calming himself down. He reached out and closed a couple of books, clicked a key or two on the laptop and closed it. By the time he was done and Dean stood at the head of the table, Sam looked ready to describe what he’d discovered.
He looked up at Dean and for the first time in a week, looked his brother in the eye then let his gaze slide away, back to the table in front of him.
“You know I’ve been working on the last of the notes Kevin left behind. He’d been blowing through the angel tablet, translating the prophecies from, I don’t know, prophet-speak or whatever they were written in, into Enochian and Latin and some Greek, a couple of passages fully translated into English, though I think I found one in Vietnamese, which Kevin told me he didn’t know. It’s weird - it seems to depend on what word he was looking for and whether he knew it in one or the other, whether it fit. I don’t know how he got so much off that one little piece of rock.” Sam picked up and shook a pile of mismatched paper, Kevin’s notes. “There’s a lot of different stuff here. Spells and exorcisms, a couple of stories that explain the beginning of the angels and one that looks like a map of Purgatory, which would have been really handy for you while you were, you know…”
“Sam.”
Sam stopped talking, looked up at his brother.
“You’re rambling,” Dean said.
Sam looked a bit chagrined. “Oh. Yeah, I guess so.”
Before he could start off again, Dean said, “Why'd you call me, Sam? We haven’t had more than ten words to say to each other in the last eight days so you must have found something important.” He really didn’t want to bring up the fight or its aftermath for fear of reminding Sam of how angry he had been to stop talking, but he felt like Sam had found something so profound that he needed to be kept on track or else he’d just talk himself in circles. Which wasn’t like Sam at all, so Dean really needed to know what he’d found so they could start dealing with it.
Sam sighed, looking at his hand resting on Kevin’s notes. “It’s a prophecy about an angel. One particular angel. A prophecy about how to open Heaven again.” He looked up at his brother. “It’s the only prophecy Kevin translated that named the angel, Dean. The prophecy names Castiel.”