Supernatural 12x03 Coda [Castiel, Mary, implied DeanCas]

Supernatural Coda, 12x03 The Foundry. Castiel & Mary talk. Implied Dean/Cas if you squint, but I am always squinting.

Interstate 70 guides her right through Topeka, headlights cutting a narrow swatch along the stretch of two-lane highway. A sign she passes tells her Lawrence is thirty miles east and she pulls off at the next exit with more than a gas station blinking sleepily at its edges, uses part of the money her sons--Sam and Dean had given her to rent a room for the next few days. There’s a grocery within walking distance, a laundromat and small general store just down the way. The boy at the counter looks to be in his teens, all limbs and acne and dark floppy hair. He has hazel eyes that dart anxiously with eye contact and Mary’s heart twists all over again thinking of the few photos tucked into John’s journal, still carefully packed at the bottom of her duffel. There’s a photo of Sam and Dean there, she’d found it sewn into the leather binding -- Dean couldn’t have been more than twenty, Sam, still a teenager, gangly and grinning. Tucked into Dean’s side and long-since too tall to fit, and Mary hears Dean’s voice in a rough echo, all we had was each other.

Setting her bag on the spare bed, Mary finds herself running a curious thumb over the journal’s binding again. It’s--not what she expected. Reading it. There’s no doubt that it’s John’s: the tight, terse script, the meticulous recording. But it’s sterile, cold and clinical in a way her husband never was. References to her, to their children, their family become fewer, far between. took dean and sam to bobby, reads an entry from the early nineties. It’s another week and a half before a note at the bottom of a third closed case suggests he has them with him again. Not long after, “Sammy” is with a man called Pastor Jim. took Dean on hunt, the note continues. shooting needs work.

Inhaling sharply, Mary drops the journal. She grabs her toiletries and her pajamas and locks the bathroom door, leaning against it, eyes closed.

It’s a long time before she finally gets around to running the shower.


Sleep isn’t coming, and so Mary tries again, running a careful finger over the rough-hewn words as though physical contact could make sense of them, could reconcile the hard, cold hunter who wrote this with the oversized and soft-hearted man she remembers. The photos are easier and so she picks them up again instead, faded pictures of Sam and Dean as she remembers them, Dean with his toothy grin and a mixing-bowl haircut, Sammy in his bassinet, barely home from the hospital. Another photo, her and John; they’d barely moved into their house in Lawrence, then. The black-and-white photo outside of a compound, the man in a wheelchair and Castiel with a rifle, she leaves that picture in the back of the book.

There’s a knock on the motel door, and Mary jolts, eyes on the clock by instinct. It’s close to 2AM. A glance out the window offers a near-vacant lot: an unloaded semi-truck; a handful of commuter cars. One or two trucks that look to be carrying farming equipment. There’s no familiar glint of chrome or black steel and Mary picks up her gun.

“Who is it?”

A now-familiar voice responds in vague irritation. “It’s Castiel. May I come in?”

For a moment she considers not responding. But she isn’t running, she reminds herself firmly. There’s no reason they shouldn’t know where she is.

She opens the door, and Castiel steps inside.

“Hello to you too.”

“I can’t stay long.” He turns to Mary. She isn’t quite sure what he expects from him: righteousness, perhaps; anger, for her sons’ sakes. She isn’t expecting his fallen expression, like it’s hurt him too when he asks, “how are you?”

It catches her off-guard and she chuckles in disbelief. “You really are an angel. I just ran out on my kids, Castiel; how do you think I’m doing?”

“I wouldn’t presume to know.” Castiel perches on the edge of one of the room’s threadbare wing-back chairs, eyes following her like a hanging picture. It’s unnerving, the intensity of it. Mary sits back down at the desk with John’s journal.

“I thought there’d be more here,” she admits, pressing her palm to aged leather. “About the boys. I’ve missed so much, I guess I thought I could...catch up.” She laughs at that, a little unkindly. “God, where do I start? I don’t know the first thing…” Birthdays, lost teeth; first crushes, graduations. A sob catches in her throat and she coughs to disguise it, swiping at her eyes. “I miss them. It’s stupid, isn’t it? My babies. They weren’t real, up there. Nothing was.”

“True.” Castiel glances up toward the water-pocked ceiling. “The version of your family you remember from Heaven was an illusion. But your feelings are real. You need time. Resurrection is...a process.”

“Castiel, how long have you been on earth?”

The question seems to catch him off-guard. He hesitates before answering. “I took this vessel eight years ago, I think.”

“And you’ve been down here since then?”

Another long pause. “It’s...complicated.” He smooths his rumpled tie, visibly uncomfortable with the shift in conversation. “You’ll be fine.” Abruptly he stands, crossing the room and handing Mary a slip of paper. “This is my phone number. In case you need anything. I thought you might prefer an option other than Sam and Dean, for now.”

Looking down at the piece of paper Mary nods. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “How are they?”

“I spoke to Sam,” Castiel says quietly. “He’s hurt, but he understands. You need time to adjust.”

His omission is so obvious Mary can’t help but chuff. “And Dean?”

Castiel glances down, briefly. “I should go. I need to get back to the bunker.”

Something in Mary’s chest seizes up. She looks down at the small slip of paper in her hand again, numbers scrawled in heavy ink. An angel with a phone number. Her father would have had a conniption.

She hasn’t had time yet, really, to give Castiel more than a passing thought. To consider why a celestial being seems to spend a fair portion of its existence walking the earth by choice, why Castiel’s chosen two humans over Heaven itself. Angels were never treated as more than fairy tales by the hunters she grew up with, but she remembers enough to know that Castiel’s relationship with her children isn’t normal.

He’s almost to the door before she works up the courage to ask him. “Why are you here, Castiel?”

Castiel tilts his head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

What a coincidence; neither is Mary. She regrets the question almost immediately. “Forget it, I shouldn’t have--it isn’t my business, I’m sorry.”

“You want to know why I’m here with Sam and Dean.” Castiel looks around the hotel room, realization a visibly dawning thing in his eyes. “And why I’m here talking to you. You think this should be beneath me.”

Wrapping her arms around herself, Mary shrugs a shoulder. “It’s just that...you’re an angel.” She smiles, remembering Dean’s own words. “Fluffy wings. Harp.”

“I don’t have a harp,” Castiel repeats, as exasperated as he sounded when Dean suggested it last time. “Sam and Dean are my family.”

“I didn’t know angels did that. Family.”

“We don’t, generally.” Castiel frowns. “My feelings are...nontraditional.” He seems uncomfortable with this line of discussion. “I think this is a conversation you should be having with Sam and Dean.” And Mary wants to ask why, but then Castiel adds, “when you’re ready. All three of you. These things take time, from what I understand.” A faint smile tugs the corner of his mouth. “Goodnight Mary. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me.”

Mary hears the door shut behind Castiel as he leaves. She doesn’t look up, though, still fixed on the small scrap of paper in her hand. Outside, an engine turns over and the room is momentarily bathed in halogen light, a blinding wash of blue-white light that sweeps the walls and disappears when Castiel turns back onto the highway, tail-lights shrinking and blinking out on the two-lane road back to Lebanon. For a moment, Mary considers following him.

Instead, she picks up John’s journal and takes it with her to the lone, bleached bed, laying it on the pillow beside her. Castiel’s phone number goes on the dresser, next to her phone.

Outside, the sounds of the highway clatter with aging eighteen-wheelers and the thick caffeine of late-night commutes. The walls are thin and behind her, someone’s fallen asleep with the television on, an episode of The Munsters droning through plywood and insufficient insulation.

Mary falls asleep with a gun beneath her pillow and the distorted theme song echoing in her ears.

--

Watery light leaks through the blinds when Mary opens her eyes again. Her cell phone flares awake when she touches it, announcing the time with prejudice. Just before five. Mary should go back to bed, but sleep was chased off with the dark of the room, pushed out in the faded curtains and fogged glass. Instead she picks up the piece of paper Castiel gave her and turns it over, curious. Angels don’t sleep, she supposes. It can’t hurt.

The phone rings twice before Castiel answers. “Mary?” It’s said in a rough whisper and Mary’s suddenly embarrassed, worries she’s interrupting...something...with her call. Maybe Castiel has a visitor. Dean never said whether or not there were other angels around.

On the other end of the line she hears shuffling. “Is everything alright,” Castiel asks after a moment, voice normal. He must have left wherever he was.

“I’m sorry Castiel. I didn’t mean to interrupt anything--”

“You’re not an interruption, I assure you.” There’s another round of shuffling on Castiel’s end, and then something murmured softly before the noise stops again. Mary grimaces, but ignores it. When he speaks again, he’ no longer whispering. “Is everything alright?”

Mary laughs, mostly at herself. “No, it’s fine. I just--couldn’t sleep. I got used to having company, I guess.”

“Oh.” The phone call stretches into an awkward silence that Mary imagines must make up a lot of Castiel’s conversations. She can’t help but notice Sam and Dean seem all but inoculated to it, Dean sometimes having entire one-sided conversations as if the angel’s been responding. Castiel never seems to mind. Mary wonders if she’s supposed to be doing that, now.

“I miss them, you know? I do. They’re my kids, Castiel. I know that, rationally. This is stupid, I get it, it’s just…”

“Grief,” Castiel finishes for her, and she’s momentarily startled. “Your family in Heaven was an illusion but you loved them.”

Mary finds she doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. “How’s Dean?”

The silence that follows has Mary briefly concerned that Castiel won’t answer, that Dean’s decided to shut her out cold. Eventually though, Castiel talks. “Dean’s fine. He’s asleep in his room.”

He sounds like he’s offering a security report. The corners of Mary’s mouth curl. “Take care of him for me? Until I come back.” And she will go back, soon. Her chest clenches tight with the thought.

“Of course. Always.” Castiel says it so quickly and freely that Mary doubts it’s the first time he’s made this promise. “Goodnight, Mary.”

Staring out at the sun now fully peaked out through the plains, Mary smiles weakly, the knot in her stomach that’s been tied tight since she woke up in the forest three weeks ago loosening with a whispered sigh, just enough to breathe more fully. It isn’t much, not really. But it’s possible. Her children are safe, and she has time.

“Goodnight, Castiel.”