Smoke

Castiel followed Dean downstairs, the trailing wisps of pleasure still curling in his Grace. Sex with Dean had been every bit as interesting, as enjoyable, as he’d hoped it would be, when he’d let himself think about it at all.

Hannah had shared notes with him at Sam’s impromptu party, and they’d agreed that a physical relationship was more valuable than either one of them could have believed just a few years ago. Even with such limited evidence to work with, so early on in a relationship Castiel hoped to experience for years, he knew this was something he wanted to keep.

Hannah wanted to keep her demon, as well.

Given the way Bela’s hair was mussed and the eddies in Hannah’s Grace, Dean and Castiel weren’t the only ones to have let themselves be distracted while claiming a room. Given the look on Sam’s face, none of them were fooling him. Castiel decided he didn’t care.

Dean nodded to Sam and turned his attention on Bela, who had several items lines up on the coffee table in the middle of the living room.

“So what’s this plan?”

Bela gestured for them to sit, and they ended up seated around the table. It was nothing like any other preparation for battle Castiel had experienced. Then again, he normally didn’t have Dean’s thigh pressed right up against his, either. Change could be a good thing.

“This can change you into a demon,” Bela said, waving a hand over the stone lamp she’d brought from the crate.

Castiel had seen many such lamps over the years. His memories were hazy, something he’d come to understand was Naomi’s doing, but he did know he’d stood in vessels by lamplight, as far back as people had been in cities. Further. If this lamp did nothing magical, it’s age still made it precious in its own way.

“Good,” Dean said. “It does exactly what we’re trying to stop someone else from doing to me. What else have you got?”

“At least, it changes most people into a demon,” Bela said, as though Dean hadn’t spoken. “The rumors are that a woman managed to return to humanity, and when she used this she became something even more powerful. You were already something like a Knight, maybe more what with the Mark. Just imagine what you could be.”

“Again,” Dean said, and Castiel felt the pulse of something from him, coiling in dirty brown and nauseating yellow, “not the way we want to go with this.”

“Ah, but the lamp also let her give up her power and become herself again,” Bela says. “I have heard people talk about it as an origin for the story of the genie in the lamp. Only she was her own genie, of course.”

That wasn’t something Castiel had heard, but he hadn’t been everywhere at once and there was no telling what Naomi had wiped from his mind. He sat forward, looking more carefully at the lamp. There was certainly something woven through it which spoke of power, but he couldn’t tell what it was. It was old.

“You intend for Dean to take on demonic powers and destroy the cultists,” Castiel said. “You think he can return to himself after that.”

Bela smiled.

“Simple, but effective.” When Dean didn’t look convinced, she became more urgent. “They aren’t going to stop, Dean. They need someone in charge, and you’re the heir by almost any measure.”

“Except I’m not a demon,” Dean said, and Castiel thought that only he heard the waver in Dean’s voice. “And this plan doesn’t have me taking the throne. Just, what, slaughtering everyone who wants to make me a Knight? Which I’ll be doing to stop them from doing it. That about sum it up?”

Bela shook her head, looking like she wanted to smack Dean with the lamp. The black smoke inside her body shifted and rose. She wasn’t anywhere near as thorny as Meg, but there was a shining obsidian core to her that made Castiel wary.

“Once you’ve taken the throne you can appoint a proxy, someone to oversee Hell on your behalf. And they don’t need to know you have this. As far as they’ll know, you’ll just be very, very good at playing human. Dean, think about it. You can order the demons to stay in Hell. You won’t have to hunt them anymore.”

Castiel felt shock, but it was distant. Maybe not even his own. Ruling Hell to curtail its power… It was an intriguing idea. Dangerous, distasteful, but interesting as a strategy.

“Are you insane?” Dean asked. “This isn’t a plan to get rid of a few cultists. This is a power-play for all of Hell.”

He jolted to his feet, leaving Castiel feeling cold at his absence, and stalked away from the chairs. Castiel twisted to see Dean standing with his hands on his head, staring at nothing.

“Who exactly do you have in mind to be proxy?” Dean asked, voice harsh.

“It makes sense,” Hannah said, as though there’d already been a protest to Bela’s suggestion.

“What makes sense?” Castiel asked, because Hannah had said nothing about any plan to put someone on the throne of Hell.

He turned back to look at her and she was as earnest as ever. As earnest as she’d been when she’d taken his army from him or when she’d pretended to save him from torture.

“Hell is meant to be ruled by an angel,” Bela said. “The level of devotion for Lucifer, even when he loathed them, is something no demon could ever manage. And they’ll accept Dean trusting you. It will work.”

This shock was his own. It wrapped around his Grace and almost choked him.

“Me?” Castiel asked, his voice rising. “You want me to take Hell’s Throne?”

“Why not?” Bela asked. “You’ve sat on it before. You’ve ruled Heaven, more or less, and you’ve declared yourself God on Earth. Why not take a turn at Hell?”

“You don’t have to stay there,” Hannah said. “Crowley didn’t. You know that. But Hell exists for a reason and wiping it out entirely… Well, that isn’t an option.”

He didn’t ask if that was because it would mean wiping out Bela.

“You’re the one with the demon lover,” Castiel said. “You rule Hell.”

“Hannah doesn’t have the rap sheet,” Bela cut in. “You do. They’ll accept you. Trust me. A lot of them consider you partway to demon trickster god already.”

But Castiel had been letting himself think about a future where Dean might ask him to stay in the Bunker. He’d let himself wonder what it would be like to build a life together properly. Throwing that away to rule in Hell, a place he’d spent more than enough time already, wasn’t something he could think about with ease.

“Cas stays with me,” Dean said. “We can’t come up with another plan, we can go with me suiting up and taking them out, but Hell is not becoming our family business.”

Bela’s lips thinned into a tight line, but she fell silent. Castiel found some measure of peace in that.

He tried not to let it bother him that neither Dean nor Sam had argued Castiel would be unsuited to the role, if Dean allowed it.