Pure Black

Sam walks out of the motel early one morning for the requisite coffee run, and stops short. Cas is standing in the parking lot, staring intently into the Impala's headlights.

Sam just stands there, torn between warning Cas that she has a temper and running back inside to drag Dean out of bed so he can see this. Before he can decide, Cas looks up and sees him, so Sam reluctantly tucks that image away where it'll do the least amount of harm (seriously, though, Dean taking on an angel over some perceived slight to the car? priceless) and walks over to join him.

"She does not like me," Cas says, and he sounds disappointed.

Sam eyes the car. She's been on her best behavior this last little while, as if she has some idea of the stakes lately. She hasn't rolled over his foot once since Lucifer was released, although she did give him a couple of good whacks with the passenger door after Dean told her why Lucifer was out, and for a month or so he had no control over anything, not even the passenger window, which she normally (albeit grudgingly) gives him. And she's taken the occasional angel-related disappearance pretty well, staying right where she is until they come back to fetch her. She hasn't even beat up another car in months, except for the Camry that Bobby gave to her to pummel, an apology for driving her while possessed. "She's Dean's car," Sam finally says. "He's the only one she really likes."

"She doesn't like you?"

"I get a pass because I'm his brother. I'm pretty sure she would've killed me already otherwise."

Cas frowns, considering that. "But Dean likes me. "

"So?"

"If she likes Dean, and Dean likes me, shouldn't she like me?"

Angel logic. No matter how often he and Dean crash into it, they still can't understand it. "Cas, she's a car. With a soul. Logic doesn't apply." Cas looks at him blankly, like that shouldn't make a difference, then disappears.

Oh, great. Bad enough their car is sentient and in love with Dean. Now Cas is jealous.

Three days later, Dean is out somewhere—probably getting drunk, but Sam's just glad they're out of each other's hair for a couple of hours—when Cas appears in the middle of the motel room and scares the shit out of him. "Perhaps I should get her a gift," Cas says, as calmly as if Sam is sitting at the table rather than lying sprawled on the floor wearing nothing but a towel and wondering what the hell just happened.

"Huh?" The back of his head cracked against the wall. Maybe that's why Cas is making less sense than usual.

"The car. What does she like?"

Sam just stares at him. "You want to know how to bribe the car?"

"Not the car. The spirit in the car."

Oh, yeah, that clears things up. "There's a spirit in the car?" Sam asks, getting to his feet. He's tried to research it a couple of times, tried to figure out what the hell happened to make her more than a vehicle. Bobby's invariable response to hearing what Sam is researching is to pop a Herbie movie into the DVD player (never once saying why he has the entire boxed set, including the ridiculous NASCAR one), and then Dean invariably goes into an anti-Disney splutter-fit (one does not compare the Impala to a Beetle, ever), and the headaches are just too much for Sam to deal with on top of everything else. The car's got a personality. They're apparently not meant to know more.

Cas nods solemnly. "A pure spirit. I do not know why it lodged in a machine, but then, a pure spirit can do whatever it wishes."

Jesus. Sam thought he had headaches from trying to figure out the relationship between Dean and the car. Now he's trying to untangle the car's relationship to, well, the car. "And the difference between a pure spirit and a normal one would be?"

"Pure spirits have never inhabited flesh."

Interesting. Sam doesn't get why it would make a difference, but then, he's still not entirely sure there's a difference between angel possession and demon possession, no matter how often Cas swears there is. "So, she could have been human, but she wound up in a car instead?"

"Yes. I cannot figure out why." Cas looks vaguely troubled. Or insulted. Or constipated. It's hard to tell with him.

Sam shrugs. "Maybe she just liked Dean." Although that doesn't make any sense, either, because he's pretty sure the Impala was, er, special before Dean was born, even if she didn't start acting out until after that last rebuild.

"You don't understand. A pure spirit is powerful. Too powerful for something so—so—" He makes a helpless little wave in the direction of the parking lot. Sam wonders if the amusement of telling Dean that Cas thinks the Impala isn't good enough to house a pure spirit is worth dealing with Dean's inevitable fury at the insult to her honor. "Sam, a pure spirit can walk the length and breadth of Hell without fear of anything. Even L—" Cas stops mid-word, as if something just occurred to him. He turns a little, like he's looking through the walls between him and the Impala—

And then he's gone again.

Sam rubs the back of his head and wonders if he should even bother trying to explain this one to Dean.

When they head out the next morning, there's a pair of fuzzy neon-green dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. Dean does not appreciate Sam's collapse into helpless giggles.

He appreciates it even less when Sam finally gets the breath to tell him that Cas has been looking for a "gift."

"And this is what he came up with?" Dean roars.

Sam has a sudden mental image of what Dean's going to do to Cas in vengeance for the fuzzy dice, and he laughs so hard he gives himself a cramp in one side and nearly blacks out. (Dean's expression doesn't help him sober up.) It's almost worth losing the ability to roll down the window. Again.

She's just not a fuzzy dice kind of car.

Cas tries fuzzy pink dice, fuzzy purple dice, and fuzzy blue dice before Dean finally threatens to choke him with the next fuzzy anything that shows up on the rear-view. So Cas pops back in to ask Sam for ideas.

His timing needs work, but that's nothing new.

"Cas!" Sam screeches, grabbing for the shower curtain and nearly bringing the rod out of the wall with it.

"Cars wear dice," Cas says. He sounds confused. "I've seen them. I'm sure of it."

"Not now, Cas!"

Cas blinks at him, as if he can't for one minute imagine why they can't have this conversation while Sam's wrapped in Bobby's ridiculous kittens-and-hearts shower curtain with water pounding on his head and shampoo running into his eyes.

The apocalypse is looming, and Cas still hasn't found the present that will make the car like him. Or that won't get him death threats from Dean.

Apparently, the apocalypse is not enough of a crisis to distract Cas from this particular crusade. In fact, he's tackling it with as much gusto as if the Impala is the secret weapon they've been looking for.

Seventeen kinds of air fresheners, including one that smelled like a bacon cheeseburger. (Sam threw that one out before Dean could find it.) Fifty-nine bumper stickers. ("'I went to Hell and all I got was this lousy bumper sticker'? CAS!") A new engine, with gas mileage that would make a Prius cry. (Bobby had the sense to shove Dean in a closet and lock the door before he could work through enough of the shock to find rage and a tire iron.) Tires that Cas swears will never wear or puncture. (Unfortunately, they're pink, and for a terrifying minute, Sam thinks that expression on Dean's face heralds an actual stroke.) A new sound system.

Okay, that one might have worked, if Cas had thought to replace all Dean's tapes with CDs or get a stereo with a tape deck.

Cas even tries to give her an actual voice, which pisses her off so much that she runs over him. Twice. Apparently, pure spirits housed in cars can out-accelerate semi-fallen angels.

Dean is starting to lose patience with all three of them. Especially after the fifth time Dean catches Cas gazing soulfully into the Impala's headlights. "Why won't she talk to me?" Cas asks plaintively.

"She's. A. CAR!" Dean bellows, waking up half their neighbors. Good thing they were leaving that hotel anyway.

Twenty miles later, Dean threatens to send Sam parcel post to Detroit and Lucifer's tender mercies if he doesn't quit laughing.

Cas shows up one night at Bobby's looking rough, having tangled with his former garrison again. Before anybody can ask for details, he tells them earnestly, "You have to stay with the car. No matter what." Like there's a chance in hell—pardon the expression—that Dean will ever leave that car anywhere of his own free will. Then, of course, Cas goes poof again.

Bobby shoots Sam a curious look. "The angel's obsessed with the car now? Isn't that Dean's shtick?"

"Hey! Standing right here!"

Sam wants to laugh, but the somber way Cas said that...

This is more than Cas feeling left out because the car won't talk to him.

Maybe he should have asked Cas why he wants the car to like him so badly.

A pure spirit can walk the length and breadth of Hell without fear of anything.

Cas' words ricochet through Sam's shared brain as he stares at his reflection in the Impala, Dean's blood on his hands, Dean's body crumpled at his feet.

Lucifer freezes in something that Sam, trapped in a corner of his own head, recognizes as actual, honest-to-God fear. Of a car.

Except that even the Devil realizes—now—that the thing he's staring at isn't just a car.

Lucifer thought he had anticipated everything. He ransacked Sam's mind for anything that could interfere in his plans, headed every possibility off at the proverbial pass. But he hadn't paid any attention to Sam's memories of the car. Why should he? What can a hunk of metal do to the Father of Lies?

Nothing.

Unless that hunk of metal is inhabited by a pure spirit.

A pure spirit….

The flood of memory that assaults them doesn't come from within. Lucifer controls every pathway in Sam's brain, including the ones leading to memories. Sam can't access anything without Lucifer knowing, without Lucifer allowing it. That's how Lucifer keeps anticipating his moves, how he keeps blocking them before Sam gets any farther than the intention.

No, that lifetime's worth of memory and emotions comes straight out of the car, hurled into him—into them—by all the rage of a pure spirit whose favorite human has just been beaten to a pulp.

And that is a metric shitload of rage.

Lucifer's iron grip doesn't falter under the barrage. It shatters.

The Impala has given Sam the only chance he'll have, and he seizes it.

A pure spirit can walk the length and breadth of Hell without fear of anything.

Even Lucifer.

the end