Living on a Prayer
nwhepcat
Supernatural/Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Sam and Dean Winchester, Castiel, Faith Lehane
Follow up to
Like the White-Winged Dove and
Waiting for the end of the World. Also,
Vessel becomes relevant.
Faith has a slayer dream which sends her on a reluctant journey to her old territory, on a quest to save a new ally.
Spoilers through SPN 4.10 "Heaven and Hell," incorporates world-building details revealed since.
Previous parts are here.When he's gone, Faith grabs a fresh pan of water and the first aid kit, then crouches beside Castiel. "Now, let's have a look."
"There's no need. You just bandaged it."
"I slapped some butterflies on it when it needed stitches. And then you proceeded to go all bad cop on the tattoo guy, and then go all angel, and you probably ripped open whatever I managed to patch up."
Castiel relents after this, allowing her attentions, although grimly. Though she's not as hurried this time, she still only slips his clothing off on the injured side, hoping to spare them both as much awkwardness as possible. Now that she's not so scared, she notices that the form he's chosen for himself is nicely muscled, then her brain skitters away from the thought.
"Look, I guess I was out of line earlier. Telling you to raise those men."
She peels the bandage away from the knife wound, and the breath hisses through his teeth.
"I think I understand," Castiel says. "You have a strong sense of justice."
She dabs at the slash with a warm, damp cloth. "Sometimes I wish I had your unshakable faith instead."
Turning his intense gaze on her, Castiel says, "Don't envy me. More and more, I question. I doubt."
She breaks the gaze, turning her attention to the wound. "Yeah, well, it's the company you've been keepin'." It makes her ache to think she could be corrupting him -- endangering him -- with her constant questioning. Who is she to argue with him over God's business?
"Don't think that." He's silent for a moment, concentrating on her movements as she realigns the edges of the cut and places new butterfly bandages. "Humans tend to believe we have all the answers. We don't. We are just required to dampen the questions. The more I see of humanity, all the pain and fear, the more miraculous it seems that faith and yearning for meaning is so strong in so many."
"
You're impressed by
us?"
A flicker of a smile appears at the corner of his mouth. "One of my brothers, Uriel, finds this distasteful."
"I bet." She carefully places another butterfly then looks up at him. "Don't get too attached to us. We'll only break your heart."
"Perhaps I should give you the same warning. I'm not, as Dean once took care to point out, Michael Landon."
Faith laughs. "I figured that out on my own. It's all right, I was never that crazy about him."
Castiel lapses into silence and Faith goes with it, working as carefully as she can considering his growing impatience.
"Sit still!" she finally snaps. "You got somewhere else to be?"
"There are other battles."
"Can you join 'em if you can't go into full angel mode?"
His silence serves as a grudging answer.
"Right. And you can't go into angel mode if you don't heal, and you can't heal if you won't chill the fuck out. Sorry." She places the last butterfly bandage and tears open a gauze pad. "This
might hold, if you try not to flail around too much."
"And what do I do in the meantime?"
"You could try resting. I hear even the Lord God does sometimes. And I haven't had more than a half hour of sleep in two days. Call me a bush leaguer, but I need to crash for a few hours."
"I wouldn't call you that. If not for you, I wouldn't be alive, and the world would be that much closer to hell on earth."
Faith busies herself with taping the bandage in place, until he gently captures her wrist.
"I know what it cost you to return here, Faith."
An unsettling feeling sweeps over her, that she's an open book to him. She's had it before. She tries for cocky. "That something you picked up while you had your hands in my viscera?"
Castiel doesn't release her wrist, or her gaze. "That's not all I restored to you. I held your soul in my hands, as well."
She nods. "Coming here, that's just me trying to return the favor the best I can. C'mon, let me help you get those back on, then we can make a plan." It's a slow process getting him dressed, mostly due to the effort it takes to keep him from rushing through it. "Look, I know you've never had any practice with being hurt, but I have. Take it slow, or you'll end up worse off than before." She heaves an exasperated sigh. "
Men."
"What?"
"It's a guy thing. When they get hurt. They're all tough guys and big babies at the same time. You've definitely got it down."
He stops resisting then, and within a few moments he's dressed without popping a bandage. It gives her the opportunity to mull over the fact that she's just called an angel of the Lord a big baby.
"How's the pain? I've got a little drugstore in the car, if you need something to dull that."
"Why would I want to dull any part of this? This is human experience. It's a rare gift for my kind."
She gathers up the litter of her first aid efforts, then stands, her knees cracking. "Enthusiastic dulling of pain is what the human experience is all about. Just hang a minute or two while I clean things up, then I'll buy you a big, greasy breakfast."
She tidies Steve's private bathroom the best she can, thinking about what Castiel has said. When she's finished she hoists her weapons bag over her shoulder and goes to him.
"Before we leave Boston," she says, "there's one last place I need to see again."
***
Faith slings her weapons into the trunk, then makes Castiel wait on the rain-washed sidewalk for a moment while she hastily clears the floor of fast food wrappers and soda bottles. She should swing by a gas station and feed a couple of quarters into the car vac. She
really should swing by a dealership and buy a new car.
"Faith," Castiel says as she emerges with a bag of trash and a scowl. "It doesn't matter."
"Does to me," she mutters. But once she's marched to the corner and stuffed the bag (which includes her blood-soaked shirt and medical litter from Steve's bathroom) into a wire trash can, she lets it go.
"Okay. Breakfast. Like I said, I'm gonna treat you to an epic post-slay diner breakfast."
"I don't need food."
"Yeah, you've said. But you're healing now. Some extra fuel might do you good, same as getting some sleep." She wonders suddenly if his body can actually handle food. Well, Dean has told her he's seen Castiel shot and stabbed with no effect whatsoever, so a few strips of bacon won't kill him. "Look, there's a place a couple of blocks from here with the most perfect hash browns known to man. While I'm here I've got to make the pilgrimage."
"I can't deny a pilgrimage," he says, and Faith suspects it's a flicker of his humor. The thing she likes about it is she's never really
sure.
She opens the door for him, then circles round to the driver's side. "They're open 24 hours, and my boyfriend Kenny and I used to eat breakfast there at three a.m. after one of his band's gigs. Half the time we were so --" She finally shuts up, about ten seconds too late. "I dunno. Maybe we should skip that. Get out of town before the traffic gets bad." Which is moronic, since rush hour's no doubt in full swing.
"Faith, you've just had confirmation that you're not the person you were."
She pulls out into traffic. "You know that, I know that and Steve knows that. Since I won't be killing any demons over breakfast, no one there who knew me will clue in."
"You throw yourself into battle without hesitation." Only Castiel could praise her bravery and sound so damn
crabby at the same time.
"Yeah, well, that I know how to do."
"You believe you're frozen in others' memories because this place has been frozen in yours. Yet you've seen how time has changed your city, your friend."
"You're gonna shame me into this, aren't you?"
"I'm not interested in wielding shame as a weapon. Humans do well enough with that one; you don't need me."
She heaves a sigh. "All right. We'll go. Happy now?"
"It depends on the hash browns."
***
When they step inside the diner, Faith's glad to see her favorite corner booth is unoccupied. She starts toward it, then her stride falters halfway across the room. If she wants to fly under the radar of anyone here who'd remember her, parking it in her old booth probably isn't the best way.
Then again, there's a reason she liked this table. Good view of the street, the door, the whole interior of the diner. If she takes the far bench, her back's to the wall, like she prefers. She shakes off her hesitation and installs herself in her old spot.
The bleached and labretted waitress who dumps two menus onto the table can't have been more than nine years old last time Faith was here. She relaxes against the worn vinyl bench and flips open her menu. Castiel does the same.
"Anything pingin' your curiosity?" she asks him.
"What do you recommend?"
"With me, it depends on my mood. Post-slay, I tend to eat like a dock worker. Corned beef hash, eggs, sausage, the works. If this was my one breakfast ever? That's different."
The waitress reappears and says, "You ready?"
"You still have the fresh-squeezed OJ here? Two of those." The waitress retreats, and Faith adds, "I don't even know how to describe the taste. Bright. Sunny. It's not the same from a carton -- that's more like a lightbulb. One of the fluorescent ones. Other than that, I'd suggest crispy bacon, French toast with banana slices and powdered sugar, topped with real maple syrup. Eggs. I like 'em runny, others think that's disgusting as hell, so I can't guess how you'd like 'em. And the hash browns. Washed down with a gallon or so of coffee."
"What constitutes perfection in hash browns?" he asks. He's all anthropologist-in-the-deepest-jungle again. She sort of finds it cute, sort of fears that when he goes back to heaven he'll write up a paper on her.
"Well, for starters, they should be brown, not tan on the outside and pasty white on the inside. You don't just glob a clump of shredded potato on the griddle and let it sit there. You have to spread 'em out, get maximum griddle contact. They sprinkle 'em with onion salt here and enough pepper to give 'em some bite."
"You put a great deal of thought into the things you enjoy."
"Doesn't everyone?"
"I'm not the one to ask. But I suspect not."
"I guess three years of prison food makes a person develop an appreciation for good things, that's all."
The waitress comes with their orange juice and pulls out her order pad. "What'll it be?"
Faith orders the two-by-two-by-two with the elements she described and a side of hash browns, and Castiel orders the same, down to the eggs over easy.
"Coffee?"
"When the food comes." When they're alone again, Faith says, "Juice and coffee are both pretty acid. You might want some food before you start in on the coffee."
Castiel picks up his glass and holds it up in the window, studying it. Outside, the clouds have cleared away, leaving bright sunshine pouring in through the plate glass (something Faith realizes she's rarely seen when sitting at this table), and it looks as if he's trying to see through the liquid.
"The little pieces are pulp," she tells him. "Bits of smashed orange. I think it tastes a thousand times better when they leave it in."
He tips the glass to his lips and takes a tentative sip. She watches as he holds the juice in his mouth for a moment, loving the concentration and then revelation flitting across his face.
"It's just as you described it." The tip of his tongue chases a tiny piece of pulp from his lip, then he picks it off like a fleck of tobacco and looks at it.
Before she can answer, her cellphone rings and she dives into her pocket for it. "It's Dean," she tells Castiel, then answers. "How's Texas?"
"Looking like a false alarm. You?"
"Ten alarm. It's out now."
"Sounds like you can't really talk."
"Not so much. It was wicked serious for a while there. Pack of really vicious dogs tried to break out of their pen. If they'd gotten out, a lot of people could have gotten hurt pretty bad. And by people I mean our upstairs neighbors."
"You all right?"
"I'm good. Castiel's hurt."
"Castiel's hurt?" Dean sounds indignant. "How the hell does that happen?"
"I told you, it was a nasty situation."
"How bad is he?"
"He's sittin' right here." Interacting with a glass of OJ like he's on an acid trip, but she decides not to say so. "He'll mend. He'll be grounded for a while, though. Heard from Sam yet?"
"Yeah. Nothin' shakin' in Wisconsin, either. Bobby hasn't checked in from Idaho yet."
"Looks like they were trying to scatter us, then."
"Yeah," Dean admits. "You were right about that." Glory hallelujah,
there's a miracle.
"We can meet up with you somewhere. Be thinking about a spot. I'll check in a little later." No way she's missing out on Castiel discovering bacon.
"How the hell does Castiel get hurt, anyway?"
"You sayin' it's my fault?"
"No. I just--"
"Damn right it's not." She snaps the phone shut and jams it in her pocket. "Dean's all, 'You broke my angel.'" Come to think of it, this isn't the first time she's heard that.
