28. Breakout

Before Castiel opens his eyes, he knows two things. The first is pain. It’s a burning ache that spreads through all his muscles and feels like it has settled in his bones. The second is that he is in fresher water than what small-sea held before dinner. His head hurts too much to focus on that thought and think about what it could mean. Every time he tries to concentrate on one thing, pain pulses in his temples and his whole head feels like it’s throbbing. The buzz of something vibrating through the water isn’t helping either.

Every breath through his gills hurts too. They don’t flutter as easily as they should and Castiel isn’t sure if it’s because of how Lilith had pulled the collar over them, or if it’s because she held the pendant for so long. He’s almost surprised that he can remember that. The memories of what happened after dinner are fuzzy. They feel like they’re from long ago, but he hopes it was only a few hours, or at most half a day.

He doesn’t want to open his eyes or move again. His adipose fins rustle on their own in the flow of the water and that should mean something too. Small-sea’s water was stagnant and without any currents. It takes much too long for him to realize that means he must not be in small-sea. But where else could he be?

If he can trust his memories, he thinks he remembers Dean saying that Alistair and Gordon were using the very-small-sea to build something for Castiel to stay in while travelling from the boat to Lilith’s home. He could confirm this if he would just open his eyes, but he doesn’t want to. A small chirp of his echolocation hurts his head immensely. The echoes return almost immediately and something tight presses behind his sternum at the realization of how small this new container is.

Carefully, he stretches his tail out. Every movement burns in his muscles and it’s a relief when the end of his tail curves against a glass-wall. It hurts more when he pushes against that, straightening his tail and back until his head touches the other end. The length is comparable to Dean’s bed and all Castiel can think is that he must be in very-small-sea.

Something loud ripples through the water and it’s not the clicking-pops of his echoes. Castiel winces at the repeating bang and how it swells through his head in aching waves. The noise doesn’t stop, continuing even after Castiel curls the end of his tail over his head and spreads his end-fans over his shoulders. He covers his side-fans with his hands and wishes that the sound would stop.

The familiar crackle of a speaker in the water is just as painful as the repeating bang and Castiel flinches from the wall the noise comes from. His head throbs with every word from the voice that muffles through the water and it takes several repetitions of his name for him to recognize the voice and the command behind it.

The lights are bright when he opens his eyes and he spreads his adipose-fins to block most of it out until his eyes have adjusted. He squints against it, trying to ignore how the light feels like it’s stabbing into his brain. Slowly, he moves his tail out of the way and he wishes he was surprised that Lilith is kneeling on the other side of the glass-wall in front of him, but he’s really not.

Lilith smiles softly, though Castiel knows it is nothing but deceiving. She doesn’t actually care, no matter how concerned she seems. She taps at the glass with her knuckles again and he twitches, hands still over his side-fans. He shakes his head and mouths ‘please’ and ‘stop’ at her. Lilith’s smile gets softer and she turns her hand, banging her first on the glass in a steady rhythm. Castiel hisses and clutches his head at the ache that pulses between his temples with the reverberations.

“Look at me, Castiel.” Lilith’s voice in the water is just as painful as the banging.

He looks up at her slowly, hands shaking over his side-fans. She puts aside what he assumes must be the microphone and taps at her forehead. Castiel is confused by the gesture for a moment before he realizes what she’s asking him to do. Her other hand is over the pendant again and he flinches away until his back is pressed hard against the glass-wall behind him. It’s hard to ignore the pain that blurs his concentration while he tries to place walls around his mind before he reaches for Lilith’s mind.

(Hello, Castiel.) She starts the moment the kin-connection is in place. (How are you feeling?)

Castiel winces at the barrage of her words and her images. She pushes insistently against the walls that protect him from her emotions or from letting her hear any of his thoughts beyond what he chooses to share with her.

Lilith presses through the kin-connection again, her touch against the walls nearly brutal. (I asked, how are you feeling? Answer me, Castiel.)

(I am sore.) He responds. He wants to ask about Dean and what happened, but he knows that Lilith doesn’t like it when he mentions Dean.

(That’s what happens when you lie to me.) Lilith’s smile turns dark and twists into a frown. (Are you ever going to lie to me again, Castiel?)

He shakes his head, cringing at the ache the movement sends through his temples. Every little movement hurts and Castiel just wants to close his eyes and go to sleep again. If he sleeps long enough, maybe when he wakes again it will be when Meg’s friends have made their move and he’ll be free not long after that. It means that he won’t get to be with Dean for his last day on the boat, but he’ll still be able to say goodbye afterward.

At least he hopes he’ll have that chance.

Someone steps up next to Lilith and he can hear the start-stop of their voice through the glass-wall. All he sees is everything up to their hips. There is a black cover over the top of very-small-sea and it hides anything taller than that. Castiel would be able to see who it was if he got closer to the other glass-wall, but he doesn’t want or need to. The deep rumbles of the voice tells him that it is a male, and from the colour of the skin on the only hand he can see, he can guess that it is Gordon.

Lilith stands up to speak with him and Castiel takes the time to look around. He has to move slowly, otherwise his whole head feels like it’s spinning and it makes his stomach twist uncomfortably if he turns to quickly.  Beyond very-small-sea is Lilith’s room that Dean called her ‘office’. He recognizes the extravagantly carved doors, the ‘desk’ and the plush sitting furniture.

Very-small-sea is pressed against one of the walls and Castiel is facing the couches. Dean is, predictably, nowhere to be seen. Alistair is sitting on one of the couches and the bruises on his face are worse than before. There’s no sign of any blood, so it’s hard for Castiel to judge how long it’s been since dinner. There are no clocks on the walls either.

The black cover over very-small-sea has two tubes that lower into the water. He has to sit up to reach the cover. It’s solid, warm, and vibrates, explaining the rumbling buzz in the water. When he lifts his tail toward the tube at the far end of the tank, there’s a pull in the water that drags his end-fans up toward the opening. The tube closer to his head is where the small current is coming from, bubbles and water getting pushed through.

This is a prison.

The male Castiel thinks might be Gordon walks away from very-small-sea and toward Alistair. He goes far enough that Castiel is satisfied with knowing that he was right. Unfortunately it means that he is alone with Lilith, Alistair and Gordon. At least he’s trapped inside very-small-sea and that means that they aren’t going to be cutting him any time soon – hopefully.

(Castiel.)

He flinches and folds his tail to his chest, tucking his arms between his scales and skin. He notes absently that the chains are gone. Gordon is giving Lilith a pillow from the couch and she places it on the floor before sitting. He returns to sit on the couch opposite from Alistair and Castiel notes that he looks drawn and tired.

(He’s still feeling a little under the weather from that time you hurt his head like you did to me.) Lilith gestures over her shoulder as she rearranges her skirt. (You remember that, don’t you?)

Castiel nods. That was the day that he had found out about the shock-tag. He hadn’t really been rushing at the time, but his grip on Alistair’s mind hadn’t been nearly as firm as it was on Gordon’s.

(I’m surprised with you, Castiel. You haven’t asked about Dean yet. That’s not like you.)

He ducks his head, watching her over the edges of his tail. There’s nothing he wants to ask more than whether or not Dean is okay and what Lilith has done with him. But he fears if he so much as says Dean’s name, Lilith will use the pendant on him to try and train him out of his concern for Dean.

Lilith is watching him steadily and her expression is oddly blank as she tilts her head. (Don’t you want to know what happened? Don’t you want to know how he was punished for lying to me and leaving those hickeys on your back?)

Castiel digs his fingers into his sides and tilts his face into his scales. He doesn’t like her questions any more than he does her knowing that Dean left marks on him. She probably saw them when they moved him here and that means Dean would have gotten into even more trouble instead of just for lying and attacking Lilith and Alistair. He sends a small plea to mother-sea, hoping that she will watch over Dean and keep him safe.

(Well? Aren’t you going to ask?) Lilith asks again.

Without lifting his face from his tail, Castiel shakes his head. He doesn’t want to play her games. All she wants is to see how upset he would be over whatever punishment she gave to Dean. Even though he really doesn’t like not knowing what happened to Dean, Castiel would rather not know. He hates Lilith and he wants to defy her in every way he can that will keep him from being hurt again.

His chest feels tight when he remembers that Dean was there. Dean saw Lilith press the pendant and he heard Castiel’s scream. At least they didn’t have the kin-connection at the time. If Dean had been forced to feel the phantoms of Castiel’s pain again, he would be far more upset than he currently is. Castiel had promised Dean – he’d promised – that it wouldn’t happen again. He knows that he’d said ‘as long as he could help it’, but this was all avoidable.

If he had just listened to Lilith like he was supposed to, if he hadn’t used the kin-connection with Dean – none of this would have happened. But not having Dean’s mind is almost as bad as not having him at all. He’s not happy with just Dean’s body. He needs all of him. Having Dean with him, but not truly having him is almost as painful as the shock-tag. It’s a different kind of pain – one that Castiel can’t deal with as easily as he can physical pain.

(You really don’t want to know? Don’t you care about him, Castiel?)

(Either you’re going to tell me or you’re not, no matter what I say. Tell me or leave me alone, I don’t care which.) Castiel lifts his head to stare at her blankly over his tail. (You’ve separated us. No matter what I say or do, you’re not going to let me see him again. Why taunt me with his punishment when I might as well just start forgetting about him now?)

There is some truth to his words and they curl in his chest, tightening around his heart. Castiel has no way of knowing if he’ll see Dean again. If the plan that he knows no details about does work, he’ll be in the ocean almost right away. He’s supposed to stay away until Dean and everyone is safe on the other boat. Then he’ll approach again and speak with Dean. If it’s not safe, he’ll have to find his way home on his own. If everything is okay, Pamela will find and remove the tags that Lilith placed under Castiel’s skin.

After that… after that he’s not sure what Dean plans to do. He knows that Dean wants to make sure that he gets home safely. Castiel can’t remember when Dean mentioned it, but he remembers Dean saying that a boat covers more distance than a fin-kin does. Maybe that means that Dean would like to take Castiel back to the light-beds himself? He would easily be able to find his way back to the colony from there and he wouldn’t run the risk of showing any humans where their home is.

In either case, he hopes the colony didn’t consider his disappearance a threat to their safety and migrated. Their trench is such a prosperous location that it is doubtful they would find a new home with so many resources that are less than a day’s swim away. Even though most of the council is composed of his nest-brothers, Castiel can’t really determine what they might decide to do when the colony’s safety is at stake.

If Metatron or Raphael make a decent argument, they might be able to convince his nest-brother’s that it’s best to move. But no one will know what happened to Castiel. Not even Uriel or Hester – the only two of his kin that he had been connected to at the time Sam shot him with the dart. He had lost consciousness before he had told them anything more than that there were two-tails nearby.

It hurts to think about how his nest-siblings likely have no idea what happened to him. Anna had been so close, not near enough for him to speak with her, but Hester’s team had been close enough that one of them might have been able to get the message to Anna about the two-tails. If she had started for him as soon as she’d heard, she might have arrived at the place Castiel had been stationed by the time the boat was moving away. 

Lilith frowns and Castiel keeps his stare impassive. (You’ve taken all the fun out of this for me. I had hoped I’d be able to taunt you with that information a little longer. You really don’t want to know what I’ve done to him?) She tilts her head again and smiles. It’s cold and vicious and Castiel is reminded of a shark again. (What if I had the guards beat him? He hit me, you know. If I wanted to, I could have ordered him killed for that.)

Castiel has to force his fans not to flare at the comment. Lilith is watching him closely for his reactions and he won’t give her anything.

(Anyone on this boat will do what I tell them to as long as I offer them the right amount of money. I thought I’d managed to hire a crew that would listen to my every order. I really misjudged Dean. He used to cheat people out of their money, did you know that? He’s not as nice as he’s tricked you into thinking.)

His adipose fins ripple unhappily. (You’re purposefully trying to get me to react. I am aware of what Dean has done in the past. He’s shared a great deal more with me than you likely know. And if you want me to forget Dean, continuing to speak to me about him is not the best course to take.)

She frowns again and leans forward, her eyes narrowing. (You’re not being very fun, Castiel.)

It’s annoying to have to force himself to act like he’s given up. But he can’t let her know about the plan. If he shows even the slightest bit of hope, she’ll be tipped off to it. (I’ve been taken from my home and my family. I have no freedom and I’ve lost Dean. Be happy I haven’t attempted to kill myself yet.)

(Don’t you dare.) Lilith’s face grows dark and she slaps her hand on the glass. (I forbid it!)

(That is the one thing you cannot take from me, Lilith. If I choose to end my own life, you will not be able to stop it. You can’t scare me or threaten me to keep it from happening. My death would be a release from you.)

Her lips pull back to bare her teeth and she slaps the glass again. (I may not be able threaten you, but I can threaten Dean. Just because he’ll go back to his own life doesn’t mean I won’t be able to find him. I can have him watched constantly, Castiel. If you do anything to hurt yourself, all it will take is a single word from me and I could end Dean’s life with yours!)

Even when he doesn’t have Dean, Lilith still uses him against him. Castiel’s head hurts too much to think further. He knows it’s not going to happen because of Meg’s plan, but he’s still not happy to hear how she would control him should they ever get to her home.  His reaction needs to be one that she would expect in this situation, but he’s tired and sore and he doesn’t want to act anymore.

Castiel struggles to push himself up. His arms still feel weak from his time against the glass-wall with Dean and they ache from Lilith’s pendant. He flares his fans and bares his fangs, hissing and trying to look as aggressive as he can while feeling as off as he does. Lilith sits back on her pillow, looking too smug for Castiel’s liking.

(Let’s make a deal, Castiel. You don’t try and hurt yourself and I won’t kill Dean. Are we in agreement?)

He hisses again. (If you hurt Dean, I will end you.)

(Oh relax. Dean is fine.) Lilith waves her hand between them, almost dismissively. (My rules haven’t changed much for him. The only difference is that he gets one meal a day until Florida. After that he and his friends will be discharged and can find their own way home while we take the plane.)

For a moment, she looks over her shoulder and Castiel can see Alistair’s lips move. Her expression changes into something almost cunning when she looks at Castiel again. (Oh yes, and I’ve taken away his communication privileges. He’s in solitary confinement – except for when he’s escorted to the washroom. Funny thing is, when I went to take his phone away, he threw it into the tank. You wouldn’t know anything about why he’d do that, would you?)

He frowns, giving in to the shaking of his arms and sinking down to lay on his side again. (I don’t understand. Is there some significance to his actions?)

(Phones don’t work in the water. It ruins them. His phone will never work again.)

Castiel knows exactly why Dean did it. He had to hide all the messages from Meg and Sam concerning the escape. It also means that Dean likely lost all the pictures and the videos that he took and Castiel feels bad that he’ll no longer have those. He curls his tail up, tucking the end under his cheek as a pillow and he hugs his chest.

(No, I don’t know why he did it. I understand your machines even less than I understand you humans.) He shrugs, wincing at the ache between his shoulders. (Perhaps he did it to spite you. He likes to do that.)

Lilith scowls and Castiel closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see her anymore, keeping up his appearance of indifference. He’s moved too much and everything hurts more than it did when he woke up. He hopes he doesn’t get sick this time like he did the last. It’s a poor time to be sick and he doesn’t have three days to waste lost in a fever. If he’s sick during the escape, it will make things more difficult.

(It’s late. Go to sleep, Castiel. In the morning, you’ll sing during breakfast. The rest of our trip will be very boring for you. But you and Dean brought this on yourself. If you had just followed my simple rules, you could have stayed with him for another week.)

Castiel  ruffles his adipose fins and closes the kin-connection without another word. Lilith will just ask for it again in the morning and there’s little point in being linked with her while she sleeps. He doesn’t know if he’ll sleep, but he hopes that he will. His body is tired and his head hurts and he wants nothing more than to sleep away all the time that he’ll have nothing to do in here.

It doesn’t seem like he was unconscious for very long this time. Maybe only a few hours have passed. Castiel doesn’t know. He only opens his eyes again when he hears a lot of thumping. It’s easily recognizable as footsteps before he wants to see what is going on outside the tank. It’s nothing overly interesting. Alistair and Gordon are leaving the room through the extravagant doors. Lilith turns off the lights before she leaves through the plain door on the opposite side of the room.

He is left alone in the dark and his glow returns. Castiel runs his hand over the circles and dotted lines along the end of his tail. With how badly his head hurts, it’s not too hard to keep his mind blank. Every so often, the odd thought about Dean pops up and he has to force it away before the uncomfortably tight knot behind his sternum grows any larger.

It’s surprisingly easy to fall asleep when you’re not thinking about anything. When he wakes to the knocking on the glass, he’s not sure if he even dreamed. There are still aches in his limbs when he sits up and rubs at his eyes, but everything doesn’t hurt as badly as it did before. Castiel sits in one corner of small-sea under the tube that pushes a current into the water.

He hugs the fold of his tail to his chest and watches while Alistair sets up plates on the desk for him and Lilith. She waves Alistair away and he picks up a bucket from next to her desk, bringing it to very-small-sea. Castiel bares his teeth at him as he steps up next to the glass-wall. The bucket thumps on the cover and Castiel briefly wonders how Alistair will get the under the cover without completely removing it.

A square of light opens in the middle of very-small-sea under the dark space of the cover. Some water and a few fish fall in before the light closes off. Castiel ignores them as they dart about in the small space, choosing instead to focus on Lilith and Alistair as they sit down to eat their breakfast. Lilith looks up at him and taps her temple once. He frowns and hates following the order, but he makes the kin-connection with her once the walls around his mind are in place.

(I want to hear that song you sang the day Dean’s arm was broken. The whole thing.)

Something sharp twinges in his chest at the request and Castiel turns away, looking at the fish. He hasn’t eaten since lunch time yesterday and he can feel the hunger clawing at his stomach. But he doesn’t feel like eating and the thought of it makes a lump rise in his throat. He closes his eyes and pictures Dean, remembering the first time, the second time, and every time since that he sang the bonding-song to him.

Castiel does his best to sing the song as he would to Dean if he were here, but the notes sound sad in the waters of very-small-sea. Lilith doesn’t disapprove of the song and she leaves Castiel alone after he’s done. He spends the rest of the morning watching the fish and trying not to think about anything that will only make him upset.

The two and fro of the fish lulls him into a vacant state this is only interrupted by Lilith’s lunch and her request for another song. He sings about mother-sea and the gift of the glow she bestowed upon his colony.  Lilith leaves him alone again, the kin-connection quiet and slack between them, while she looks at papers spread all over her desk. She spends a lot of her time speaking on a phone.

He eats one of the fish, absently chewing the meat from the bones, while Lilith is pacing her office. She walks from one wall to the other, talking animatedly into a headset that isn’t connected to any speakers that Castiel can see. Sometimes during the conversation she looks angry, other times she looks very pleased. Many times she picks up papers from the desk and waves them around while she moves. It’s such a repetitive path that it’s nearly as calming to watch as the fish.

The afternoon drags on much longer than the morning. At one point, Castiel cuts the kin-connection completely and dozes. He naps straight until supper time when Lilith tells him, without the link, to sing. He hasn’t failed to notice, as Alistair and Lilith sit down to eat, that they haven’t given him any more fish than the few that were dumped in this morning. It’s not surprising that his meals have been reduced like Dean’s have.

Castiel sings another two songs during supper. The first is a teaching song for the hatchlings that explain the locations of several places around the colony’s trench and the landmarks to follow to reach them. The second song is one of mourning, sung for those who have been lost. For a brief moment, before he manages to switch his thoughts to something less depressing, Castiel wonders if his nest-siblings have sung this song for him as they line his sleep-shelf with stones and shells.

He eats another of the fish while Lilith lounges on one of the couches with a book. They don’t have the kin-connection at the moment and Castiel is a little curious about the book and what it is bout. Even if they did have the link, he wouldn’t ask Lilith about it. As bored as he is, Castiel would rather have the silence than the kin-connection with her. With how much that he blocks her out, they might as well not have it at all.

When she finally puts the book down, Lilith stifles a yawn. Castiel has done little more than stare at the two fish that remain and let his thoughts drift absently. She manages to get across with gestures alone that she wants him to sing a lullaby before she leaves goes to bed. She leaves when he’s done and Castiel watches the fish in the light of his glow when the lights go out.

He doesn’t know when he falls asleep, but he dreams of steady-blue burned red. Of the tainted air that chokes him. He dreams of Dean and the fear he’d seen before Lilith had pressed the pendant. He dreams of the world described in Dean’s book. His sleep is agitated and troubled, and when Lilith wakes him in the morning he doesn’t feel rested.

Today is the day Meg’s plan is supposed to be put into action. He doesn’t know what time it will happen and anticipation thrums through his veins. His adipose fins ripple constantly and if he had the space he would be swimming in excited circles. He tries not to let the bubbles of hope take root in his chest because he doesn’t want to feel disappointed if nothing happens. Instead he focuses on trying not to look too excited.

He starts singing before Lilith has a chance to ask. This song is one of celebration and he sings it loud and vibrantly. She looks at him oddly while she eats and Castiel can only pray that she thinks he is acting differently because this is the second day that he’s been kept in very-small-sea. He stretches his tail as best he can in the small space and spreads his fans rapidly, preparing them for the open sea.

When her breakfast is done, Lilith dumps another four fish in through the opening in the center of the cover. She puts her head-set-phone on and starts her pacing while she talks. Castiel sits curled in the middle of his prison, watching her walk while he eats all the fish. He doesn’t know when his next meal might be and he doesn’t want to waste these.

His fingers twitch over his scales and it’s almost painful to hold still. He wastes the hours of the morning playing with the fish bones, arranging them in designs similar to the glow patterns of his nest-siblings. If he’s lucky, he’ll be seeing them again soon. The thought makes his chest feel tight, but not in the same way that it feels painful when he thinks that in the same time frame – likely less – he won’t be seeing Dean anymore.

He sings another song of celebration while Alistair and Lilith eat lunch. Even Alistair is looking at him strangely, but it may be because his voice is shaking slightly. He was less excited for his first hunt than he is now for Meg’s plan.

It’s only a few hours later, while Castiel is trying to copy his glow-pattern with the fish bones when something happens. He’s not sure what it is, but there is a sound like thunder and everything shakes. Very-small-sea slides away from the wall and if it wasn’t for the cover over top, he’s certain that a large amount of water would have sloshed over the edges.

Everything on Lilith’s desk, the tables and the walls is on the floor. Even Lilith is spread out on the ground. The water keeps splashing in the space between the cover and the surface. Castiel looks around wildly, concerned when the boat rocks again and very-small-sea slides back into the wall with a loud thud. Lilith can barely get to her feet and he can hear her screaming through the glass.

The room is tilting dangerously, but the furniture doesn’t move – much to Castiel’s relief. If it had, the couches would be sliding straight into very-small-sea. Lilith is having trouble getting to her feet and she kicks off her shoes with the pointed heels before she can manage to stand on her bare feet. She staggers to the extravagant doors but Alistair throws one open before she reaches them.

The tainted, hard to breathe air comes into the room through the opening, snaking over the ceiling. Lilith is shouting and she clutches at Alistair’s arm, gesturing back toward Castiel. He presses into one end of very-small-sea, his hand on the glass. He doesn’t need to fake his concern as he mouths Dean’s name. Castiel doesn’t know what happened or why the boat is tilting, but the fear on their faces makes him think that this isn’t a good thing.

Alistair tries pulling Lilith out the door and the fear changes to anger. She pulls away from him and gestures wildly back at Castiel, shaking her head and stomping her foot. They shout at each other for several long moments. Alistair face twists in frustration before he throws up his hands in defeat and pulls a dart-gun from inside his coat.

Castiel’s fans flare and he hisses, pushing away to curl in the far end of very-small-sea. If they make him sleep he won’t be able to help with the escape or swim away like Dean told him he should. He could attack Alistair’s mind to buy himself some time, but Lilith could use the pendant immediately and it doesn’t take too long for it to knock him out.

He’s almost in line with very-small-sea when the room’s wall ruptures. Everything is bright and noisy and Castiel hits the glass-wall as the entire prison gets knocked on its side. It feels like when he hit the ledge a few days ago. His head is ringing and everything is swirling in his vision. The air is dark and Castiel can see flickering yellows, oranges and reds. There’s a faint memory somewhere in his head about what those mean and it makes his adipose fins ripple in alarm.

One of the glass-walls of very-small-sea is under him now. Castiel tries to see through the dark that clouds the air. The first thing he sees is Alistair, lying face down on the floor not far from where Castiel’s prison is. He doesn’t know where the dart-gun went, but he can see the red blooming through the back of Alistair’s white coat and his wide, vacant eyes. Castiel does not feel remorse his passing.

There’s a scraping noise beneath him and Castiel flinches at the grating sound. The boat is still tipping dangerously and it doesn’t seem to matter that very-small-sea is no longer on wheels. His heart is beating hard in his chest and he slams his shoulder against the black cover. The air is too dark outside of very-small-sea and he can’t see further than Alistair’s body but he knows that very-small-sea is sliding toward the broken wall. What he doesn’t know is what is on the other side of the wall.

The cover isn’t moving and the grating scrape of glass-wall on the floor is loud and it jars his side-fans. Castiel presses his tail against the bottom of very-small-sea and tries to use it as leverage. Through gaps in the dark-air he catches flashes of blue and his next breath catches. Is it steady-blue? Is it the sea? Is that what he’s slipping towards? What difference does it make if he’s still stuck instead this prison. He’ll sink into the deep trapped behind glass-walls so close to his freedom but not actually having it.

Panic squeezes tight in his chest and it’s getting hard to breathe. He doesn’t know what to do and he snarls in frustration, beating his tail against the walls and pounding his fists on all the surfaces he can reach. There’s a sharp crack above his head as he thrashes his tail and Castiel freezes, even as very-small-sea slides another little bit closer to the hole.

There are clusters of little lines in the glass-wall that is now his ceiling and more lines spreading out from it in twisting streaks. It hadn’t been there before the room-wall had burst inward. Castiel presses his back to the floor and rolls his body sharply to smack his tail against the center of the cluster. The cracking noise sounds again and the lines spread more as the cluster grows bigger. He hits it again and again and it keeps growing.

Every hit makes very-small-sea slide a little bit further through the tilt of the room and Castiel doesn’t care that it’s half a tail-length away. The sea is beyond the hole and as long as he can get out of this prison he’ll be more than happy to fall through it.

Something slams heavily into the end of the prison and it skids to the side away from the hole, moving toward the safety of the wall. Lilith has blood running down her face from her hairline and her clothing is torn in a few places. The dart-gun is in her hand and she looks furious. She is screaming and pushing very-small-sea further from the hole.

He snarls and slams his tail into the cluster of lines again, eliciting another satisfying crack. It can’t be much longer before it breaks. Lilith shouts again, her words muffled through the glass-wall. Her eyes are wild and her hair is clumped with blood. She bangs on the glass with the dart-gun and closes her other hand around the pendant.

The pain sears through his mind, stemming from the back of his head. It spreads down his spine to the end of his tail. His muscles burn and his vision clouds and Castiel knows he’s screaming but he can’t stop it because everything hurts.

And then it’s gone. There’s the remaining ache and the haze in his head that makes it hard to focus, but the pain isn’t shattering through his bones and stealing his breath anymore. Castiel slumps to the floor, his gills aching with every inhalation. It takes too long to gather his thoughts and his whole head pounds in time with his blood. He needs to keep hitting the glass on the cluster lines, but he can barely gather the energy to move.

He isn’t expecting one of the walls – but no, that’s not right that’s the black cover, not a wall – to fall away. The water sloshes across the floor and Castiel is left gasping as his lungs clear of water and his gills seal flat to his neck. He coughs and tries to push himself up to see what’s going on, to defend against Lilith if she tries to get him out, but his arms won’t hold him up and his head doesn’t feel right.

A hand wraps around his upper arm and Castiel growls, trying to pull away from the touch. He gets pulled from the empty very-small-sea and he struggles as much as he can, tail thrashing and teeth snapping. There’s so much noise. Crackling, popping, screeching, screams and loud pop-bangs. It’s overwhelming and Castiel’s head is already pounding. Castiel doesn’t stop struggling until a well known scent hits him and an all too familiar voice overcomes the pounding in his head.

“Cas, calm the fuck down! It’s me!”  

Castiel twists around, ignoring the tilt of the boat and the scraping slide of very-small-sea for the time being. Dean has the blue-sleeve on again and his guitar case is strapped to his back. There are new bruises on his face, blooming dark over the old ones that had been healing nicely during the last week. Castiel keens happily and leans into him. His arms are still sore and they feel heavy, but he manages to get them around Dean’s shoulders.  He presses his face to his neck and hugs him as tightly as he can.

Dean squeezes Castiel to his chest. He’s muttering sounds against Castiel’s side-fans and it takes several attempts before he manages to focus enough to establish the kin-connection between them. Warmth crashes through their link first, forcing the panic behind Castiel’s sternum to uncurl. Concern comes next, sweeping around Castiel’s mind as insistently as Dean’s fingers do over his body.

(You didn’t get hurt in the explosion, did you? Aside from what Lilith just did, you’re okay, right?) Dean leans back and holds his chin, tilting Castiel’s face from side to side. (I can’t believe those dumbasses fucking torpedoed us. I’ll have Meg’s head for this.)

(I’m fine, Dean.) Castiel lightly touches Dean’s new bruises while Dean undoes the collar, tossing it somewhere over his shoulders. (They hurt you.)

(Not as bad as I hurt them.) He pulls Castiel’s hand away and draws him forward into an insistent kiss. It’s messy and impatient, desperate and maybe just a little scared. Dean’s fingers press almost too harshly into the back of his neck and it ends as suddenly as it started. (I’ve got to go get Pam. Meg and Jess are already on the other boat and Bobby and Sam are helping these ‘activists’ – Christ, they act more like pirates – keep the guards pinned. Everyone else is getting on the lifeboats.)

There are so many thoughts and it hurts to receive them, but this could be one of the last times he gets to speak with Dean and he refuses to give this up. He’ll suffer through the dull throbbing in his head as long as he needs to. (Are pirates bad?) Castiel looks up at him in confusion as Dean fumbles behind his back before withdrawing a bundled towel.

He shoves the rolled towel into Castiel’s arms. (Yeah, Cas. Pirates are bad. You stay in my head, okay? Go far enough that no one can catch you, but you stay in my head until I tell you if they’re good people or not. You remember what to do in either case, right?)

(Come back to remove the tags, or find my way home.) Castiel clutches the bundle tightly as Dean lifts him. (What is this?)

(Meg gave ‘em to me. They belong to you.) Dean staggers as the boat lurches again and he carefully walks around the remains of very-small-sea.

The dark-air has thinned considerable and Castiel doesn’t feel the tickle in his throat like he did the last time he had to breathe it. Dean is carrying him closer to the hole in the wall and there are patches of flickering red-orange-yellow along it’s edges. (What happened to Lilith?)

(I shoved her out. If a lifeboat hasn’t picked her up, then she’ll still be in the water.) Dean thoughts turn hard and cold, even as he stumbles again. (I won’t hold it against you if you want to get revenge on her. If the blood in the water isn’t enough to draw some sharks, you’re welcome to bleed her a little more and leave her to them.)

Castiel is a little surprised by the vindictive edge burning along Dean’s thoughts, but he can’t deny that he’s wanted vengeance from the moment he found out what Lilith’s true plans for him were. He sends his acknowledgment into the kin-connection and follows it with all the warmth that burns in his chest.

Dean stops as close to the edge of the hole as he dares and he hesitates. Castiel can feel it in the way he’s arms tighten under his tail and over his back. The kin-connection goes quiet and something twists painfully in Castiel’s chest. Dean is hiding his emotions from him during what could be one of their last moments together and it hurts. Castiel looks down at the bundle in his arms and he’s not sure what he should say.

He doesn’t want to say ‘goodbye’.

“Cas.” Dean mumbles and Castiel looks up at him so quickly is vision swims. Dean is looking down too, but he’s not looking at him. “Stay safe, okay?”

It’s not a goodbye. But it’s close. Castiel’s chest squeezes tight and he can feel a stinging behind his eyes. Dean kisses him again, nothing more than a quick press of their lips, and then Castiel is falling. He folds his fans tightly to his body before he hits the water and tries not to lose the bundle in his arms.

Fresh sea water floods his throat and flows through his gills. Despite the ache in his muscles, Castiel stretches his tail by swimming in excited circles, moving deeper with each rotation. When he finally stops, the water is dark around him but he can still see the surface and the two boats adjacent to each other. One is much smaller than the other and there are a few even smaller boats spreading away from the two.

Castiel can still feel Dean’s presence in his mind. His emotions are still hidden, but Castiel hides almost nothing from the kin-connection – especially his worry for Dean’s safety. The bigger boat – the one he must have been on – is listing heavily at one end. The place the helicopter blades had been before is gone. There is nothing but a hole of twisted metal. The boat is sinking and Castiel hopes that Dean and Pamela will get out together.

He can smell blood in the water and a few pulses of his echolocation tell him that there are no sharks nearby. Not yet at least. Castiel unwraps the bundle Dean gave him, watching the boats above and looking for Lilith. There’s so much debris in the water that it’s hard to locate the struggling form of one small female.

To Castiel’s delight, the items wrapped in the towel are his weapons. He lifts the familiar weight of his sword and slashes the water experimentally a few times. It’s just as he remembered and he’s inexplicably pleased to have them both back. His kelp belt isn’t there and that’s understandable, it would have rotted days ago. Castiel takes a moment to slice the towel into strips. He ties them together and uses those as a belt, tucking the dagger into it as he drifts back up towards the boats.

Castiel notices Lilith while he’s deciding whether or not to put his sword on the belt too. He’s not sure if Dean is paying attention to him in the kin-connection right now, but he sends out the thought anyway to let Dean know that he found her. Even though he does that, he won’t share with Dean what he plans to do to her. He  doesn’t exactly what he wants to do yet and he thinks about it as he swims toward her, his sword slipped into the belt too.

Lilith looks like she’s trying to make her way around the sinking boat to the smaller ones. Something dark, hateful and angry fills him. This is the female who ordered his capture, who stripped him of his home, his family, his freedom. She’s the one who beat him, tortured him, who ordered so much pain for both him and Dean alike.

If he lets her live, she will return. She knows that Castiel comes from a place near the light-beds. Who knows what machines the humans have that will allow her to probe the deeps until she finds his colony? And what would she do to Dean? Would she have him hunted and punished for releasing Castiel? He can’t take the risk. Castiel has lived his whole life for his colony, for his nest-siblings, and he will not let this fragile, floundering female threaten everyone he holds dear.

Castiel approaches her from below. She starts thrashing the moment he drags her down with a hand around her ankle. He doesn’t go far, just a tail’s length beneath the surface. He wraps his tail around her legs, keeping her in place and holds her wrists in one hand as she tries to push him away. At first it’s fear on her face, but then she focuses on Castiel and her expression turns to one of rage. Bubbles stream from her nose and mouth and she struggles harder against his hold.

He could keep her here, so close to the surface but not letting her get any nearer and watch her choke on the sea. But it’s not nearly a satisfying enough ending for her. Castiel bares his fangs and leans in toward her neck. Lilith’s anger turns to terror and she screams, struggling harder. He fists his other hand in her hair and pulls at it sharply to bare her throat. But he doesn’t bite her. He bites the thin chain holding the pendant around her neck and he jerks back sharply. It snaps away and he spits it out, letting the pendant sink away to the deeps.

Lilith still twitches in a fruitless struggle, but the bubbles have thinned and Castiel knows she’s suffocating. If he doesn’t let her go soon, she’ll drown. A part of him wants to draw this out, to prolong her suffering for as long as she did his. If he was one of his nest-brothers, he likely would. Castiel keeps his hold on her wrists and uncurls from around her legs. She fights briefly, but her lips are starting to turn blue and her movements are jerky and uncoordinated.

Castiel dives. He drags Lilith with him until his glow shines brightly and lights the way. He takes her as deep as he can before the kin-connection with Dean becomes strained and threatens to give way to distance. There’s blood coming from Lilith’s mouth, her ears and her nose. Castiel leaves her there, drifting in the dark. If sharks don’t come soon, then undoubtedly some fish will be attracted to the scent of fresh food.

He returns to the boats to find the one that has been his prison for the last few rotations is half underwater. There is more distance between it and the other boat now, and many of the lifeboats are much farther away. Castiel follows the kin-connection. It grows stronger the closer he gets to the new boat. The more clear the kin-connection becomes, the worse Castiel feels. Dean’s emotions are strained, still mostly hidden from him, but he is upset – devastated.

(Dean?) He reaches through their link to touch his thoughts with concern. (What’s wrong?)

It takes a moment before Dean responds. He seizes at Castiel through the kin-connection, dropping the walls around his mind. Castiel offers all the comfort that he can to the broken thoughts that fill their link. He tries to take a moment to sort through them and find out what’s wrong, but his own head still aches and everything is a mess between them.

He swims in tight circles beneath the boat, far enough that he could dive well out of reach of any weapon should a human drop into the water to try and shoot him again. The hum of this boat’s helicopter blades is a constant disruption in the water and Castiel follows with his lazy loops as it moves away from the now quickly sinking boat, heading back the way the prison-boat had come.

Castiel continues to touch at Dean’s mind with his curiosity and his worry until Dean finally answers in images rather than words. It’s difficult to decipher, since Castiel never saw that part of Lilith’s boat, but when he understands, any joy that he had felt over his escape fades dramatically.

Lilith’s office and her bedroom had been located above the room Pamela stayed in. And Pamela’s room had been at the back of the boat above the area with the helicopter blades. Castiel pulses apologies and his empathy. He has lost friends before too and he knows how much it hurts. Although it must be worse for Dean. His relationship with Pamela had been much closer than any friendship Castiel has ever had and he hates that he feels a twinge of jealousy over what Dean had with Pamela. It’s inappropriate to feel like that now.

He doesn’t know how long he follows the boat, or even if they are going in the right direction. But he doesn’t complain. Dean and his family are mourning the loss of their friend and Castiel is reveling in his freedom and the feel of the open ocean. There are no glass-walls again and it’s refreshing to have the clicking-chirps of his echoes take longer to return to him.

Sometimes Dean will check to make sure he’s okay and Castiel will respond with images of great schools of fish that he catches glimpses of, or simply the grand open emptiness of the sea. He still feels regret over Pamela’s death, and it dampens his spirits every time he thinks of it, but he doesn’t stay saddened for long. He is free and it is wonderful.

Bright-pearl has nearly disappeared over the horizon when the boat comes to a stop. Dean sends him an image of the back of the boat and the flat shelf that sticks out of it – much like the Lilith’s boat did. (Come to the swim deck, Cas. These guys are okay.)

(How do you know?) Castiel lowers his glow and swims closer to the boat, close enough to see Dean sitting with his legs crossed, alone on the flat shelf of the ‘swim deck’.

(Well for one, the guy captaining this tub is someone I know from prison. I nearly pissed myself when I ran into him on Lilith’s ship. He’s a good guy and just got a bum rap like I did.) Dean sticks one hand into the water and Castiel comes up from below to touch his fingers lightly. He smiles at the surprise that startles through the kin-connection.

(Sam and Bobby hoarded some weapons from our breakout and if anyone here tries anything we’ll be able to hold our own. And nobody’s demanding that you come onboard. You can stay in the water most of the way, if you want.) Dean wiggles his fingers and grins down at him when Castiel peeks above the waves.

Castiel is confused. He sends that into the kin-connection while raising further out of the water. He coughs the water from his lungs and tilts his head as he looks up at Dean. (What do you mean?)

Dean mirrors his confusion and raises his eyebrows. (We’re taking you home, Cas. It’ll be faster if we go by boat, but you can swim as much of the way as you want. Nobody is going to force you into a tank or anything again. We don’t even have one onboard.)

Warmth pulses hard in his chest and flutters along his ribs. Castiel’s fans flare in surprise and he reaches out of the water for Dean slowly. (Does that mean – how long will it take to get back?)

(Barely a week and a half. We’re going to be stopping once to refuel and resupply when we hit Africa, then we’ll head south to the islands.) Dean grins again and helps pull Castiel up onto the swim-deck.

If Dean plans to accompany him all the way back to the light-beds, it means he has more time with Dean and he fills the kin-connection with his joy.  Dean’s jeans get soaked by the water dripping from Castiel’s tail, but Dean doesn’t say anything about it. Castiel settles in the cradle made by the fold of Dean’s legs and he curls his tail around Dean’s hips, a purr rumbling deep in his chest.

Dean smiles again, but his eyes are sad and Castiel isn’t sure if it’s because of Pamela, or if there is another reason. He leans into him, resting their foreheads together and brushing concern against his thoughts. It’s several quiet minutes before Dean says anything more.

(I miss Pam.) He slides his arms around Castiel’s back, pinning his fans. More silence fills the kin-connection before Dean shakes his head and forces a new subject. (We nabbed the portable x-ray before we abandoned ship, so we can still check the tags. We don’t have a vet to help out, but Meg has autopsied her fair share of animals before – as creepy as that is. If you’re okay with it, she could try to get the shocker out.)

Dean’s thoughts continue, flowing from one into the next as if he’s trying to distract himself from what he first said. (It really shouldn’t matter because we’re who knows how far from the remote control. What happened to Lilith anyway? Did you get her? Is she gone? I hope you got her good. She was more monster than she was human and I know that’s a shit thing to say but I can’t help it.)

Castiel tilts his chin and presses a soft kiss to Dean’s mouth. He may not be speaking with his throat voice, but the action is enough to silence him. Dean’s arms tighten and Castiel kisses him again at the corner of his lips.

(The pendant is lost to the deep and so is Lilith. She will never use her influence to hurt anyone again.) His arms settle around Dean’s shoulders and he hugs him tightly. (And you have no need to worry about thoughts like that, Dean. She has likely hurt more people than we know and for what she did to you, for what she did to me – she deserved the end she received.)

He only hesitates slight before continuing. (Pamela did not.)

Dean flinches at the thought and his fingers press into his back. Castiel shushes anything he might say, covering the kin-connection with a blanket of comfort. He gives Dean no warning before he starts to sing.

It is the same song he sang during Lilith’s dinner the day before, but this time he sings it with a purpose. He sings the song of mourning for Pamela, for a human. It is the first time this has happened in any history that he knows.

Dean’s arms grow tighter with every verse and he pushes his face against Castiel’s neck, his cheek pressed over his gills. Castiel continues to sing even when Sam, Jess and Bobby come up to the railing that separates the swim-deck from the rest of the boat. He doesn’t stop when new people step up too, even though so many new faces makes his stomach twist with anxiety. When the song finally ends, nobody moves and nobody speaks and it’s a long moment of silence that follows.

Dean pulls back eventually and his smile reaches his eyes this time. (Thanks, Cas. Pam would have really loved that.) He kisses him softly and grins when he leans away again. (We’ve got a bit of an audience, huh? I should make some introductions.)

Castiel nods and Dean twists around to look behind him. He gestures at an unshaved man wearing a flat hat that sticks out over his face somewhat like Bobby’s baseball hat does.  “That’s Benny. He’s the guy I told you about. Benny, this is Castiel – Cas.”

Benny puts his fingers to the edge of his hat and tips it forward slightly with a nod. “Pleasure to finally meet your mermaid, brother.”

He speaks with a different pronunciation than Castiel has heard before and it makes his adipose fins ripple, curiosity pulsing into the kin-connection as Dean translates the words. Castiel doesn’t fully understand why Benny is calling Dean his brother when they are not related.

(I’ll explain later.) Dean brushes the questions aside and points at another man standing not too far behind Benny. He is also unshaven and he holds a short glass filled with amber liquid. He is dressed in black clothing similar to what Alistair wore during the first dinner Castiel ever had with Lilith. Dean makes a scornful sound at the comparison. (It’s called a ‘suit’, Cas. He’s wearing a suit.)

“And he’s Crowley.”