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The woman comes up to Castiel as he stands by the pump, filling the gas tank on his car. She's slender, brown-eyed, with wide cheekbones and waves of glossy black hair. She looks young, and there's a tired look in her eyes that reminds Castiel of how he felt when he was human, the weariness that hounded him day by day. Perhaps that's why, when she asks for a ride, he hesitates only a moment before nodding. Or maybe it's just that he wants to help, for once—the past months, locked in his skull with Lucifer at the reins, had been a path he'd chosen because he wanted to be of service in the fight against the Darkness, but he can't ignore the certainty that his limbs were used for more harm than good."What's your name?" he asks her, as he pulls out of the gas station and back onto the road."Lien," she answers. She doesn't ask for his name. Castiel is fine with not giving it to her, fine with not being known. Most of the people who know him want him dead, after all. The Winchesters might still be on his side, but Castiel can't forget how he opened his eyes on the floor after the fight with Amara, to see Dean looking at him with such hatred. It was warranted, of course—Dean couldn't have known that the Devil was gone. But the moment stays burned into Castiel's mind, the moment when Dean had looked at him, had looked at Castiel, and had seen Lucifer.He can't blame Dean for that; sometimes he looks at himself, at the hands he's regained control of, and isn't sure that they truly belong to him. Amara ripped Lucifer out with a flick of her wrist, but his vessel still doesn't feel quite his own. He still has moments where he wonders if he ever left the false mirage of the Bunker that he constructed within his mind, moments when he thinks that what he sees and feels are just figments of his imagination, that Lucifer is still wrapped around him and over him, a torrent of fire and light and hate, operating Castiel's body like a puppet, using it to kill and maim.In the driver's seat of the car, Castiel flexes the incorporeal tatters of his wings, the broken remnants curiously comforting, proof that he's not an archangel, proof that he's only Castiel, who fell. He remembers making his slow, earthbound way back to the Bunker after Toni Bevell's banishing sigil flung him through space, remembers halting as he saw Dean, the way his heart had skipped a beat in a way it hadn't done since he was human. He remembers the clench of dread in his chest, the certainty that he was still asleep, ensnared by the freezing wind of Lucifer's stronger grace, bound tight and helpless in a dark corner of his own head. Dreaming of a dead man.But Dean is alive, he reminds himself. He remembers the feel of Dean's arms wrapping around him, the warm smell of Dean, real and present and alive in the dark bunker. He remembers, too, the stricken guilt that had followed his moment of relief—he hadn't been able to protect Sam, hadn't been able to honor Dean's last request.In the span of those few awful minutes (before Sam had miraculously stumbled in, having escaped Lady Bevell and made it home safe, after all), Dean had prayed to him—just his name, just Cas uttered quietly into the space between them. Cas, Dean had prayed, the word piercing through Castiel's apologies and remorse, the prayer overflowing with Dean, with the warmth of him, the weight of him, the sincerity and truth of him. Lucifer is gone and Castiel still feels hollowed-out, charred by the archangel's cold hate, but Dean's arms around him had felt anchoring, like he was holding Castiel steady, closing up the gaps left by the Devil. (Cas, Dean had prayed, the word so warm and weighty. Lucifer's voice had been all wind and fire and light and lies.)"Thank you for the ride," says Lien suddenly, breaking the silence.Castiel blinks and shakes himself from his reverie. He glances at Lien. She's wearing a shirt the color of poppies, and over it a tiny white jacket that seems intended more for decoration than warmth."You're welcome," he says hesitantly, the words sounding strange in his mouth. He wonders how often he's said them before—how often he's successfully helped. He had left the Winchesters and their mother in a motel room in Nebraska, one of many such rooms that they've been treating as home, now that the Bunker's safety is uncertain. He'd left to track down a lead in Colorado, hoping for more information on the London Men of Letters. But that was only part of the reason, he knows, and he's afraid even now that it was the wrong decision, that he wasn't so much leaving as fleeing.It's better if we stick together, Dean had said, frowning. It had only been a week since they'd all reunited at the Bunker, only a week since they hastily packed their bags and fled, and Dean had been vibrating with anxious energy ever since, barely resting a moment as he held them all together, as he managed the hundred little things necessary to look after everyone, keep everyone safe. We're safer together, Cas, he'd said. Yet he'd made no move to stop Castiel.This could help us, Dean. I'll be back in a few days. He'd said it in the motel room doorway, his hand still on the knob. Dean's prayer from days before had hung heavy in the air between them, too overwhelming to be discussed, too electric to remain unspoken for long.In the car, Castiel shivers, drawing a sideways glance from the silent Lien. The new threat represented by the Men of Letters had overshadowed everything else, but even now to think of Dean (Dean whom Castiel had nearly lost, Dean who is alive) is frightening and enthralling all at once, because to think of Dean is to remember how Dean's prayer had, beneath everything else, felt like a kind of promise. Even if he can't bring himself to think about it. (Cas, Dean had prayed, and the flood of emotions behind it had terrified Castiel even as it drew him forward.)***They've been driving westward on I-76 for perhaps an hour when Lien suddenly says, "Please pull over."Castiel glances at her, startled. They're in the middle of nowhere, the highway almost deserted, the nearest exit miles away."Pull over," she repeats sharply, and he complies and brings the car to a stop along the side of the road. Lien gets out, not closing the door. She walks around the front of the car as Castiel watches, perplexed, and bends to rap on his window.Perhaps it's an odd hitchhiker custom. There's so much he still doesn't understand about humanity. Lien keeps tapping, her brow furrowed, urgency in her manner.Slowly, he rolls the window down. "What are you—"She reaches in, grabs his shoulder, and yanks them both into the void.***His feet hit solid ground and Castiel stumbles, falling backwards into a driver's seat that is no longer there. He lands hard on his back, palms and forearms slapping against the ground.Lien turns to look at him. "That," she comments, almost to herself, "was far easier than I expected it to be.""How did you—"But she's stepping back now, a match flaring to life in her hand. She drops the light with a flourish and Castiel watches as flames leap up from where it lands, racing in a circle to surround him. Holy fire. He can smell the sweet tang of the smoke as he climbs slowly to his feet.He scans his surroundings. The floor beneath his feet is smooth, dusty cement, and high above he can see a ceiling crisscrossed with pipes and metal rafters. The windows are high up on the walls, all of them boarded up except the nearest one, which lets in a few faint rays of light through its coating of grime. An abandoned building, he thinks. Perhaps a warehouse or a factory, once, that has been gutted and left in disrepair.From the other side of the flames, Lien watches him, her head slightly tilted to one side. Her posture has changed; it's straighter, more open, thrumming with a sharp, dangerous grace. Firelight flickers in her eyes."Who are you?" says Castiel quietly.She blinks and her eyes click beetle-black. "My name is Set."His grace shivers with recognition. "You're a demon."Her eyes return to brown. "Very good, Castiel." He registers the use of his name with a thrum of unease. She begins moving around the circle of holy fire, her gait predatory, confident. Castiel pivots slowly on the spot, keeping her in view. The circle of fire is perhaps ten feet in diameter, the flames leaping knee-high, though it might as well be twenty feet or a hundred for him. Behind Set, he can see dark, irregular shapes—a stack of pallets, a long table, some long-obsolete machine hunkered in its final repose. Other objects farther back, difficult to make out in the gloom of the space."I couldn't sense you," he says, frowning. And he still can't sense her, can't glimpse her true form or detect the foul scent of brimstone, the way he can with other demons. He studies her and sees a slim dark-haired woman in jeans and a plain red shirt, and if he hadn't just seen her eyes flicker obsidian that would be all he'd think she was. Castiel wonders if Lien had been the real name of the vessel, and feels a pang of sorrow, wondering who the woman had been, what she might have wanted to be, before a demon came and—took, as demons do. As he'd done, he reminds himself. To Jimmy Novak, and to others before, in times long past."I have been on this earth a long time, angel. Millennia." A few steel poles rise from the floor to the rafters above, like ribs in this old skeleton of a place. Set leans against one now, running a slender finger down the dusty metal. "I have survived by learning how to hide myself, from Heaven and Hell alike.""And what do you want?" demands Castiel. "What do you want with me? How did you find me?""So many questions." She brushes her hair behind her ears and studies him for a moment. "I want the throne," she says finally. "I want Hell. And I have been searching for you for some time, for that purpose."Castiel frowns. "There is no love lost between me and Crowley," he says, "but he is at least a known evil. Surely you don't believe I would help you overthrow him.""I don't need your help," Set snaps. "And as for Crowley, he has already been overthrown. He's been a weak leader for years, and Lucifer's return was the final straw that broke his reign. You ought to know that. You hosted the Devil in your own skin, did you not?" Castiel flinches (wind fire light hate cold) but Set seems not to notice, continuing, "The demons of Hell no longer follow Crowley. Hell has no leader." She tilts her head again, a thoughtful half-smile tugging at the edge of her mouth. "But demons were made to follow, and an appropriate display of strength will rally them."Castiel snorts. "And capturing me, that is your so-called display of strength?"Set laughs at that, a pure, cruel, beautiful sound, though it's devoid of humor. She straightens up from the pillar and, turning, walks away from the holy fire toward the long table behind her. Castiel takes the opportunity to scan the room again. He sees nothing that looks of immediate use, but given time, he thinks, he can find some way to bridge the holy fire. He's done it before, after all. Keep her talking, he thinks Dean would tell him. It doesn't seem like that will be difficult; Set is expounding over her shoulder to him as she bends over the table, fiddling with something."Crowley's problem," she says, "is that he makes everything far too complicated. Hell is a straightforward place. It's not his weak-willed, watered-down bureaucracy." She straightens, her back still to Castiel, but he can hear how she spits the last word out contemptuously. "Hell is pain, and darkness, and death. The weak are ground down, and the strongest rise. There is a purity to that, a simplicity.""And you believe you are the strongest," says Castiel. He tilts his head back, considering the metal pipes running along the ceiling. He has the power to yank one free, but not faster than Set will notice. And the pipes are too narrow to block the holy fire.His phone is in his coat pocket, the Winchesters' numbers a few taps away. His fingers twitch towards it. If he can distract her—Set turns around at last and walks back toward the ring of holy fire, turning something over in her hands. It clinks softly, the sound of metal on metal. "I believe in simplicity. And the simplest way to the throne of Hell is to do what Crowley could not do. What even Lucifer did not accomplish." She stops on the other side of the flames, letting the object swing loosely from one hand. It's a whip, Castiel realizes—metal, the handle bone-white, the lash a chain of overlapping triangular segments that glint silver in the light as they slide through her fingers. "I'm going to kill the Winchesters. No elaborate plans, no cat-and-mouse games." She grins, the first expression of true amusement that he's seen cross her face. "Just their dead bodies laid before the hordes of Hell."Castiel pushes down the surge of protective anger that flares in his chest, the cold stab of fear in his heart. Dean and Sam are on the alert for danger, he reminds himself. They are well-hidden from demons, humans, and angels alike. But he's never met a demon who could cloak itself from his sight before, and he reads a calm, calculated confidence in the Set's bared teeth. He forces himself to laugh, making it as derisive as he can. "If that is your plan, go find the Winchesters and try, demon."Set laughs too, the sound just as ancient and joyless as the first time. She flicks her wrist and the tip of the whip goes skittering over the concrete floor. "The Winchesters will come to me, Castiel. They've always been weak when it comes to family, and I have you now, after all."Ah. So he's to be bait, then. Castiel curls his hands into fists. The demon's not wrong—the Winchesters have always let their guard down, when it comes to their family and friends. And now, because Castiel was weak, because he was a fool, he's going to endanger them again.He sees Set draw her arm back, and steels himself against the coming blow. There's nowhere to go, no room for him to maneuver within the circle of holy fire, so he tries to focus his thoughts, tells himself that the pain will be only skin-deep, an assault on nerve endings that angels don't need. He's disciplined, he can ignore the damage to his vessel and concentrate on escaping—The jangle of the whip, as it snaps out, chimes in his ears, and a line of fire carves its way across Castiel's uplifted arm and down his side. He staggers back with a cry, blinded by the pain of it, and it's hurt him, in a way ordinary metal shouldn't have—it's a searing agony against his grace, it's cut him down past the flesh of his vessel, into his essence, his true form.His vision is blurry, whited-out at the edges. He can see the faint shine of his grace, seeping out from the lash marks. He forces his head up and Set smirks at him. Her eyes are alight with pleasure. She shakes the whip out, a long curl of silver. "Reforged angel blades. Crowley does have some good ideas." The whip flies out again, and Castiel braces himself, but it does little good—he feels the bite of the metal against his legs like a live wire, and then he's yanked to the ground as the whip snaps his feet out from under him. He rolls with the impact, coming dangerously close to the holy fire, frantically pulling his wings in close to his body to keep them from the flames.Set stalks around the edge of the circle towards him."I won't call them for you," Castiel gasps. Lying on his back, looking up at her, he feels vulnerable, exposed, but he refuses to look away, refuses to scramble for shelter where there is none."Don't worry about it, angel," Set assures him. The fire casts her features in ghoul-like splendor, throwing odd shadows over the planes of her face. "I'll handle it." She raises her arm again. "Just need to prep you first."She brings the whip down, the overlapping segments whistling and hissing through the air. Castiel grits his teeth, wills himself not to make a sound, but the lash lays him open from shoulder to hip and he screams anyway.
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Castiel wakes to a hand in his hair and something warm pressed against the skin of his throat. He forces his eyes open, wincing as the layer of drying blood on his face cracks and pulls at his skin. He's bitten his tongue, and his mouth is slick with the taste of copper. Set is kneeling beside him, using one hand to hold his head up by the hair and the other hand to fasten something around his neck."No," Castiel starts to say, his tongue thick and clumsy. "Stop—" He tries to lift his arms, tries to push Set away, but stops with a groan as pain races along his body, thin fiery lines of it, his grace flaring out of the long jagged cuts left by the angel blade whip."Easy, angel." Set lowers him to the floor, carding her fingers briefly through his hair. The gesture is too gentle and he hates her for it, hates that it reminds him of Dean's hand stroking back of his head, Dean's arms wrapped around him.Set stands, brushing dust off the knees of her jeans. A few drops of his blood are spattered across the back of her hand. "You lasted quite a bit longer than I believed you would," she says. "I thought I'd have to renew the holy fire, lest it burn out before you succumbed to your injuries."The flames had seemed to be burning a little lower, Castiel thinks, though it's hard to remember much of the past hour other than the repeated blows of the whip, the bright silver flashes trailed by agony. From the floor, he turns his head to see that the fire is gone now, only a few wisps of smoke rising from where the oil had burned. He knows better than to hope this means possible escape; if Set has allowed the fire to die out, doubtless she has something else up her sleeve. He puts a hand up to his throat and his fingers encounter leather, a thick band of it, wrapped snugly around his neck. He fumbles with the clasp at the back of his neck, but it refuses to open."What is this?" he rasps. The leather is rough under his fingertips, covered in etchings he can't decipher by touch. Wincing with effort, he rolls onto his side, manages to get his hands under him. Beyond the smoking circle, he sees his angel blade. He doesn't remember drawing it and assumes that Set must have disarmed him after he lost consciousness."A binding collar," Set says in answer, making no move to stop him as he struggles to rise. "It has no name in the tongue we are speaking now, but the priests of old Egypt once used them, to control lions and unruly slaves. A bit overkill, perhaps, for lions. But...there was magic to spare, in those days."Castiel has made it to his feet when the collar wakes; he feels a subtle tightening, a sudden surge of heat, a bloom of power that emanates from the leather. A sharp, piercing pain in the base of his chest makes him double over with a gasp.He looks up at the demon, who smiles."Down you go," says Set, and Castiel does go down, driven to his knees and then to the ground by a deafening roar of magic in his ears. The collar is hot against his throat, burning his skin, choking the life out of him. He gulps uselessly at the air, aware that he's arching his spine on the cement floor, his fingers scrabbling at the leather band. At the same time, he's only dimly conscious of the physical discomfort, for the collar is attacking his grace as well now. There's a howling in his skull, voices he can't make out, shadowy stirrings of spells and bindings. It's old magic, dusty and ancient and vile, and he feels it boring into his essence, caging his grace within his vessel, snaking around it like a chain, pinioning what's left of his wings. Faintly, as if through thick cotton, he can hear the sound of his own strangled screaming.It seems like a long time before he can draw breath, and when he does he's aware that it feels different, necessary in a way that it shouldn't. His limbs are heavy, his senses dulled to a level they haven't been since he was human. As if in response to the thought, he feels his grace struggle against the collar, though the movement is sluggish, confined. Not human, he thinks. Only bound. He opens his eyes, stares at colored shapes which swim and flicker for a moment before resolving into the nondescript brown shoes of Set's vessel.Set crouches down again. "Tell me something, angel." She takes a handful of his shirt collar and lifts him effortlessly to his feet. Castiel clutches at her wrist, but there's no strength in his grasp. He feels nauseous, dizzy with blood loss. Not human, but near enough, he thinks.With her other arm, Set reaches into his coat pocket and extracts his cell phone. "How fast do you think the Winchesters will come for you, when I ring them?"Castiel rather doubts Dean and Sam can spare the time to track him down, occupied as they are with staying one step ahead of the Men of Letters. But for a moment he imagines the Winchesters bursting into the warehouse. He imagines Dean and Sam, the way they move, like whirlwinds, like vectors of intent. He imagines the way light will spark in Set's eyes, as Dean guts her. He feels dried blood crackle on his face again and realizes that he's smiling."I think," he says, "the question is how long will you live, if the Winchesters come for me."Set throws back her head and laughs. She tucks the phone into the pocket of her jeans, and then she draws back that hand and strikes him, hard, across the face. The blow knocks Castiel sideways; stars flash in his vision and his feet go out from under him, Set's grip on his shirt the only thing holding him up."I don't intend to die, Castiel." She punches him below his chest, in the unprotected spot just under the ribs, the solar plexus. It's a cruel, crushing pain, and the thunder of it leaves him reeling; he heaves for air, clutching at her arm as he tries to breathe, registering again with dismay that he even needs to breathe. "When they come, I will have the advantage." She draws him in by his collar, and he feels her grip loosen just before she throws a vicious hook that splits the skin of his cheek and sends him crashing back down to the cement. Breathe, he orders, curling in on himself, trying not to throw up. The knuckles of his left hand are skinned bloody from the fall. Breathe."You may be underestimating Dean and Sam," he wheezes.Set stalks toward him. "Yes, I've heard the stories," she snaps. "I wouldn't care to face them alone. But I have you."Castiel lifts his head, meeting her eyes as she bends over him. She bats away his weakly raised hand and pulls him into a sitting position, not even bothering to lift him to his feet this time."If you think I'll fight on your side—" he begins, the retort cut off as another punch snaps his head sideways.Set raises her eyebrows, wipes Castiel's blood off her fingers with the lapel of his coat. "I really can't see it coming to that, can you?"The question sounds rhetorical, but Castiel is at a loss. "Then what—""By Lucifer, you are stupid," she hisses, rocking back on her heels. "Do you really not understand how this works? That your precious Winchesters will do as I say because I have you?"Castiel spits out a mouthful of blood and laughs in her face. Laughs because he gets it now, gets what her plan is, and it's going to get her killed, because Set is wrong. The Winchesters are the best fighters he's ever known, but they fight for each other first, before everything. You're the best friend we've ever had, Dean had told him in the car, and there had been truth in that, Castiel had felt the weightiness of that statement, the honor of it, but it's Sam who is first to Dean and Dean who is first to Sam. He remembers the fight with Lucifer in Hell, blows landing like lightning, the shadows and torchlight and Lucifer's viperish speed—remembers being pinned against the bars, an archangel looming over him, Dean's back to him as the older Winchester rushed for Sam, always Sam. (I could go with you, he'd said. Take care of Sam, the reply had come; inexorable, holy, absolute.) It's the way things should be—Castiel's place is not to be shielded but to be a shield; protection isn't something he's earned, isn't something he deserves, not after everything he's done. If Set plans to pit his life against the Winchesters' lives, if she plans to stand before Dean and weigh Castiel's safety against Sam Winchester's, then she will come up short. And so Castiel laughs.He's still laughing as Set's fist cracks into his jaw and knocks him onto his back; still laughing as one of her nondescript brown shoes connects with his ribcage; still laughing as she wrenches him toward her by his wrist, the pain of the torque all too real and penetrating with his grace locked down; still laughing up until the moment she breaks the last two fingers on his hand."Better," she says in response to his cry of pain. She rises, scowling. "I gather you don't think much of my plan, Castiel. Perhaps you know something I don't."Castiel turns his head to the side to spit out more blood. There's a sharp, knife-like pain spidering along his side now. A cracked rib, maybe. What he knows is that he was nothing when he said yes to Lucifer and he became still less, after. What he knows is that the Winchesters will risk anything for their friends, except each other.Set takes his phone out of her pocket and taps at the screen. She is still talking, her voice taking on a mocking quality now. "Perhaps you've had a falling out with the Winchesters," she says conversationally. "Perhaps that's why I found you out in the open, unguarded and unwary, while they remain hidden away in their safe haven." She tilts her head. "Why were you running, angel? Why were you all alone?"Because I am a coward, Castiel thinks. Before, during the fight against the Darkness, and in the moments before and during and after Dean's sacrifice, everything had tasted of desperation and haste and too little time. An apocalyptic blur. Now that there's space to breathe, regret claws at him, the reality of what he's done and failed to do has sunk in, and he doesn't know how to look at the Winchesters. Didn't know how to look at them, in the few days before he gave in to his shame and fled to Colorado.And yet Dean had still prayed to him. Castiel still doesn't know how to translate the meaning of it, doesn't know how to reconcile the endless array of mistakes he's made with the implicit trust he hears in Dean's voice. He's—he doesn't know what he is. Even the angels didn't know. (Efram taunting him, Efram demanding what are you? like Castiel was some twisted, mutated thing.) He's tainted by Lucifer, hated by the angels, torn apart by Amara. He's foolish and weak and useless, and yet he's somehow still counted as a friend by the two people he's let down more than anyone else. At least, he thinks he is—he thinks he's still their friend, thinks and hopes that he hasn't managed to destroy that. He's terrified that he might not be, and also terrified that he is.Set appears to be actually waiting for an answer, but Castiel isn't sure how to sum up the convoluted tangles of his fear and failure. "They won't come," he slurs over a split and swollen lower lip. The words echo in his ringing ears. He wants it to be true and he wants it not to be true. "And if they do, they won't come unprepared."Set kneels beside him yet again. "Bold claims, angel. Let's test them." She grabs him by the hair and yanks his head up. Castiel registers what she's doing too late to turn away. The flash of his phone's camera makes him flinch.He blinks, trying to clear his vision of the bright lingering glow, squints at Set as she lowers him gently to the floor. It looks like she's scrolling through his paltry list of contacts. He makes a weak grab for the phone, but she leans back to avoid it and cuffs him almost absent-mindedly in the face, not taking her eyes off the screen. He's humiliated by the carelessness of the gesture, furious at how the blow stings his already cut-up face, dismayed at how his confined grace is blocked from healing his swollen cheek and bloody nose."And...send." She shoves the phone back into her pocket. "I suppose it would be more traditional to cut off your ear and mail it, but I want things to move along a little faster."Castiel meets her eyes. He has fallen and fallen, but he was a soldier of Heaven once and he musters every ounce of righteous fury he has left and pours it into his gaze. He breathes shallowly around the pain in his side, swallows down the taste of blood on his tongue."What now, then?" His voice doesn't tremble, and he takes a small, doomed pride in that. He's afraid, he realizes wretchedly. He was a soldier of Heaven once, but now he's only afraid. Afraid for the Winchesters. Afraid, selfishly, for himself.Set reaches out to cup his face in her hands, holding his head in place as he tries to pull away. "Can you guess, angel?"He glares at her. Dean, he thinks into the emptiness, as if Dean is an angel and can hear prayers. Dean, I'm afraid."I won't kill you," says Set. "That's not the plan." She reaches one hand around behind Castiel's head, to take hold of the back of the collar. She keeps her other hand against his face, stroking the thumb along his bruised cheek. "But I was a torturer of Hell, once. And...as I said, I believe in simplicity, in going back to our roots." She blinks at him, opens eyes that are jet-black and shiny.Castiel looks away, lets his own eyes slide over her shoulder toward the dim and dusty ceiling high above. The collar burns painfully against his throat. He can feel his grace, faint and faded, less real than the pain inflicted skin-deep and bone-deep to his vessel. Dean, he thinks again. Dean, I'm afraid—
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It turns out their mom is the kind of person who takes long showers.Dean doesn't begrudge her this in the least—the water pressure can't have been that good in the 1980s, he figures, and when you've spent the past thirty-odd years in who-knows-where before being resurrected by an ancient entity as its parting gift to one of your two now-adult children, you're probably entitled to the thinking space afforded by a long hot shower.And sometimes, when he and Sam are waiting for Mary to come out of the bathroom of whatever dingy motel room they've rented on that particular day, the two of them catch each other's eye and break into small, shared grins.They're doing that now, as steam and the faint sounds of Mary's singing filter out from the crack at the bottom of the bathroom door. Sam from his seat at the tiny corner desk, Dean from where he's sprawled lazily in the hideous paisley armchair. Looking at each other and grinning like idiots, because this? This waiting for their mom to stop hogging the bathroom so that they can brush their teeth? This isn't something they'd ever thought they'd have. Isn't something they'd even considered the possibility of having.They could simply rent two rooms, Dean acknowledges, distractedly peeling the label off the beer he's been nursing. But the certainty that the Men of Letters are on their trail, combined with the couple of close calls they've had over the past week, leaves him uneasy, reluctant to separate his suddenly-larger family each night, to leave his mom unprotected. He suspects she can take care of herself rather better than most people can—she was raised as a hunter, after all—but the world she's been dropped in isn't the same as the world she left, and even hunters need time to get their bearings.He'd considered asking Cas to stay with her, keep watch over her, since the angel hasn't seemed to need sleep since opening his eyes and waking from Lucifer's control in that warehouse. But in the end, he'd found that he was loathe to leave Cas out of his sight, as well.He reasoned that the angel was still recovering from his stint as a backseat passenger in his own skin, on top of which he'd had to make his way all the way back from California or wherever Lady Bevell had jettisoned him to. But he'd known that wasn't the whole story, known that there'd been more to it—that something was different between him and Cas, had been different since their reunion in the Bunker. Different ever since Dean had seen, really seen, the wrecked look in Cas's eyes and heard, really heard, the depths of anguish and guilt in Cas's voice. Something shifted, something changed—something, or many things, that Dean had let slide into new configurations, had let slip out into his voice and thoughts, in the wake of his post-averted-apocalypse euphoria."You're worrying about him again," says Sam patiently, not looking up from his laptop."Am not," Dean lies automatically. He takes a defensive sip of beer."Dean, he'll be fine. Cas knows what he's doing. And he wasn't depowered at all when Amara pulled Lucifer out." Sam quirks his mouth in a half-grin and taps his fully-healed knee. "Which ended up being really lucky for me.""Yeah, I know." Dean shifts uncomfortably in the armchair. It's not that he doesn't think Cas can take care of himself. It's just—Cas has been on his own for so long, and Dean thinks that his prayer to Cas in the Bunker had been a kind of promise, had been Dean promising without saying the words that no, you are not worthless and we'll all be okay, together. So yeah, that last bit has him a little anxious, about making good on that, about keeping everyone together, where he can watch out for them. Cas included.He thinks there was more, too, layered deeper within the prayer. He doesn't know what Cas heard; he doesn't even know what he was broadcasting, doesn't yet know everything he was trying to say, there in the semi-darkness with his hand on Cas's shoulder. And he hasn't had time to parse it out yet, hasn't had time to think about what he was saying and not saying, not when they've had to focus so hard on staying a step ahead of a bunch of cranky British bastards, not when the showers always turn cold after only a few minutes because his mom has used up all the hot water.So he'd left all that out of the argument, in the end, and had just said, belligerently, that they were safer when they could all keep an eye on each other, and to his surprise no one had put up a fuss.So nights, now, his mom sleeps in one narrow bed and Dean and Sam trade off between the other and whatever form of armchair or dusty carpet the current room supplies. Castiel often sits at the table, or on the edge of the AC unit. Who knows what he does all night—research, Dean assumes, since breakfast usually involves a new report of information from the angel—but most mornings Dean wakes to find Cas watching him, his gaze piercing and steady, his eyes unreadable.Dean usually doesn't comment on this. Once he would have sniped at Cas for it, called it creepy, joked that he doesn't need a babysitter. He isn't sure if his silence is much better, though, if the lack of reaction comes across as discomfort. He can't bring himself to wear the old mask of his callous humor anymore, but neither can he bring himself to show the feeling that he's long since identified—he's not completely clueless, emotionally—as relief. Relief that Cas has stayed, that he's alright, that he's still there. Still watching out for Dean, still, after everything. And even in their current predicament, that feels like safety.A week had been long enough for Dean to get used to that, to become accustomed to that quick burst of reassurance each morning, as he opened his eyes and found his family alive and safe after another night. So it gnaws at him, Cas's current absence. They'd tracked down a potential lead on the London Men of Letters, some documents that offered to possibility of more information; it had been tenuous at best, something that might or might not pan out, which Cas used as grounds for investigating alone.Dean had thought that a flimsy argument, but he hadn't forced the issue. It's possible, he thinks, that Cas just wanted a little space.Space. Yeah. Dean tries not to look over toward his phone, which is charging on the nightstand. He wants to text Cas, but he's already done that a couple of times today and he doesn't want to seem smothering. At the same time, there's a gnawing worry in the base of his chest, an anxiousness he can't quite tamp down.Because yeah, maybe Cas wanted space, wanted to go solo for a bit, clear the air between them, but Dean can't shake the feeling that he's missed something, that for every problem he does know about there are more that he doesn't. That there are other things eating away at Cas that Dean's not aware of. He's realized, far too belatedly, that Cas hadn't seemed to be in a good place even before the fiasco with Lucifer. He's remembering little things that should have clued him in, little cracks in Cas's usually implacable demeanor, little hints of weariness and worry.At the time, of course, he hadn't really registered all of that; everything had been subsumed by the more immediate and pressing danger of the Darkness, and buried still farther, for good measure, by the cloying, soporific lure of Amara's hold on him. Now, though, he's remembering, and chewing himself out for not doing something more about it. For not paying attention to Cas until freaking Lucifer sank fangs in him. Too little, too late, he thinks bitterly. He isn't sure how to reach Cas now, isn't sure how to push through the walls of guilt he can see behind Cas's eyes, the jarred and aching look he catches on the angel's face, sometimes.Hell, he isn't sure whether his attempts would even be wanted, after—well, he doesn't feel like going through and cataloguing yet again all the ways he's hurt Cas, all the methods by which Dean's let him down, but clearly the sum total was enough to convince Cas that there was nothing left to do, push come to shove, but throw himself on a blade called Saying Yes To The Devil.Sam's phone chirps; almost simultaneously, so does Dean's. They trade a quick glance, Sam pulling his phone out of his pocket as Dean groans and slowly heaves himself off the armchair."It's from Cas," Sam reports, swiping at the screen."Mine too," says Dean, unplugging his phone and looking down at the text. He hides his relief, glad for this sign that the angel is safe. "Maybe he found something useful." Maybe he's on his way back now, he lets himself add silently.It's just a blank message with an attachment. He taps to download, adding, "Actually, it's probably just a picture of a baby guinea pig or something." He turns to smirk at Sam, so he has a clear view of his brother's face as it goes bone-white and terrified, as Sam lets out a choked-out, horrified gasp and practically throws his phone down onto the table."Wh—" Dean starts to demand, and then he looks down at his own phone and the word dies on his tongue, to be replaced with the acrid taste of bile clawing its way up his throat.It's a photo of Cas. A close-up, harsh with the glare of the camera flash, as if the phone was held just a few inches away. Cas's face fills most of the shot, starkly white against the dark background behind, the paleness of his skin accentuated by the livid bruises and bloody cuts marring his features. There's blood dripping from Cas's nose and mouth, coating his lips and chin; more blood seeps from countless gashes on his cheek and forehead.Dean stumbles forward, his feet taking him toward Sam while his eyes remain glued to the image on his screen. Nausea is making him light-headed, and yet he can't look away. Cas's right cheek and the side of his jaw are swollen and discolored; his hair is sticking out in every direction. His eyes are wide, slightly unfocused, the irises a brilliant blue, the pupils shrunken to tiny dots from the light of the flash. He looks—exhausted. Defeated. In pain. No shit, Dean thinks, running his eyes again over the horrific damage that's been inflicted on his friend's face."Are you—are you seeing this?" he croaks out, finally tearing his eyes from the photo to stare at Sam.Sam nods; his face has recovered from its initial shock and his mouth is set in a grim line, but his eyes betray his uncertainty and worry. He hold up his own phone, so that Dean is hit by a second, identical version of the image.The click of the bathroom door, opening, startles him. It's their mom, toweling her hair dry. She stops when she sees their faces. "What? What is it?"Sam puts his phone down and slowly slides it across the table toward her. She bends over to look and her expression instantly tightens. "Who sent this?""We don't know," says Dean shortly. There's something digging its teeth into his heart, something black and cold and awful. It's suddenly difficult to breathe. He's afraid, he realizes. He puts his phone on the table, face-down so he can't see the photo of Cas anymore."It's Cas's number," Sam is saying. "But—" He's tapping urgently away at his laptop, and he shrugs at their mom over the top of the screen, leaving out the obvious.Dean states it anyway. "But he's not taking the picture, obviously." He twists his hands together. "Unless the dude's into some seriously kinky stuff, all of a sudden." He tries to inject humor into the statement, to hide how his curled fingers are shaking, but his voice comes out flat and wooden."Dean," says his mother, half-shocked, half-reproving. Sam is too accustomed to Dean's bullshit to even react."Sorry." He runs his hands through his hair. Tries to hold the fear in check. "Okay, okay, so someone's got Cas. The Men of Letters?"Sam frowns. "It doesn't seem like their style.""They shot you," Mary points out. "Twice.""Yeah, but this?" Sam shakes his head. "Bevell meant business, but I don't think she would—would do...this.""Then who took the picture?" Dean demands, choosing not to point out that Lady Bevell isn't the only representative of the Men of Letters who's after them. "Who sent it to us?""They must want us to know they have him," says Sam. He narrows his eyes at Dean. "But why, what good does that do?""First step in a kidnapping," says their mom. She purses her lips. "Or...a threat, a warning."Dean kicks the edge of the bed. "You know what? I don't give a damn." He can feel the fear ebbing, forced under by a cold fury. He relishes the anger; it makes it easier to block out the image of Cas in his mind, easier to stop imagining what could be happening to the angel right now. "They want us to know? Their mistake. We find them, we beat the crap out of them, we get Cas back." He says beat the crap out of them but in his head he's picturing death, picturing stabbing Cas's blank-faced captor or captors through the heart."Alright, but how?" says Sam, frustrated. He turns the laptop towards Dean and Mary. "Whoever it is, they've disabled the tracker on Cas's phone.""They disabled it? What's the point of a tracker that you can disable?""The point is not to infringe on someone's right to privacy, Dean—""I think Cas would rather be alive than have his privacy—"Their mother cuts in, her voice steely. "This discussion is not going to help Castiel right now."Dean turns and paces, a tiny circle. Think, he tells himself, trying to stay afloat over the repeated chorus in his head (you shouldn't have let him leave you shouldn't have left him alone you shouldn't have let him go). Trying to breathe evenly, through the mounting sense of panic (you shouldn't have let him leave you were supposed to protect him Cas Cas where are you Cas). Aloud, he says, "Okay, we scour every traffic cam from here to Colorado, we get a locator spell, we start checking hospitals. We call Crowley, he can help us look—""Crowley? The demon?" says his mom, appalled."Yeah, Mom, sometimes we work with demons," Dean snaps. His tone is too curt and he regrets it, watching her eyes go flinty. It's pretty clear where Sam inherited his pissed-off face."We are not going to a demon for help," Mary says flatly. "That's not something that ends well. I should know.""It's not up to you!" Dean growls. He disregards her glare. He can't think about that now. He can live with his mom being mad at him. (Hell, he's glad for the opportunity to have his mom mad at him.) He can't live with—without—He shakes off the thought. "This is Cas, Mom, and if he's in trouble—if—if he's captured, and hurt, we need to use every resource we have.""How do you know Crowley isn't the one who's got him?" says his mother. "How do you know you can trust him?"Dean opens his mouth to reply, but realizes too late that he doesn't have an answer, because the truth is, he doesn't know if he can trust Crowley. Frankly, there have been so many configurations of sides and mutual enemies that he isn't sure where they stand with the erstwhile King of Hell anymore. Or at least, he doesn't know it with any certainty, and instinct alone is barely enough to convince him, let alone his mother.Sam says quietly, "Dean, she's right.""Oh, you really think Crowley—""I'm saying we don't know, Dean. It could be anyone. It could be demons.""Or the Men of Letters," says their mom quietly. "You could be wrong about Ms. Bevell.""Fair enough," Sam acknowledges. "Point is let's just look into this ourselves first, okay? There's time to talk to Crowley later.""And just let Cas...?” Dean trails off, clenches his jaw shut so that he doesn't beg. Just let Cas suffer, a nasty voice finishes, in his head. Just let him rot. He presses a fist against his forehead. You've done it before. He'd wanted things to be different, this time. I wanted him safe, he thinks. (You let him go you didn't watch over him you didn't take care you didn't.) He'd thought he could protect—everyone. His mom, his brother, his friend. He should have known better. Safety isn't a luxury afforded to the people in his life, isn't something that Cas has enjoyed since he stepped up to bat for the Winchesters.Fucking damn it.Sam ploughs on, insistent, his voice gentle, calming. "We know where he was going. We know what car he was driving. We'll find him. And whoever this is?" He points to the phone. "If they'd wanted Cas dead, he'd be dead. They sent us this photo. Why would they just send us the photo? They want something, Dean. There's more to this."Dean meets Sam's eyes, but the gnawing beast in the pit of his stomach doesn't abate, just changes shape. Cas might not be dead, but wherever he is, he's suffering. He's hurt. It might not be because of Dean—and frankly, that hasn't been ruled out—but it's just one more reflection of failure on his part. It's okay, he'd told Cas, and yet it never was."Dean." Sam's voice is steady. "We play along, we find out everything we can."Dean grits his teeth."Yeah?" prods Sam, still in that gentle voice. Dean expels a heavy breath. "Yeah," he mutters finally. "Yeah, okay. But we need—" To hurry, he thinks. A mental picture of Cas's face flashes through his mind again, the blood drying across it, the cuts gleaming and wet. He's not healing, Dean thinks, and a fresh stab of fear goes through his chest like ice."I know," says Sam firmly. "I know, Dean. It's not the first time we've had to track somebody down, okay?"Dean swallows. Tries to marshal his thoughts in order. "Whoever sent this." He taps his phone, still face-down on the table. "If—if this is some kind of fucked-up kidnapping, or something. They'll have to contact us again. Right?"Sam nods vigorously, looking relieved that Dean's pulled himself together. "Right. We can find out more then. In the meantime we can track down Cas's car, we can start checking the news..." He's already typing, a look of renewed determination settling over his features. Dean tries to tap into that hope. We'll find him, he tells himself, echoing Sam's words. We'll find him. It'll be okay.Mary has picked up Sam's phone and is studying the screen intently. "What's on his neck?" she asks.Dean frowns. "What? I didn't see—"She comes around the table, holding the phone up. "There, under his chin." And Dean must have missed it on first glance, so occupied was he with what was going on in the region of Cas's face, but there actually is something; it looks like leather or cloth, obscuring Cas's throat, from below his jawline to where his neck disappears at the bottom edge of the photo.Mary squints, tilting the phone. "It looks like there's something—" She pokes ineffectually at the screen."Um. Mom. Two fingers to zoom." Sam mimes the motion."There. See?" Their mom magnifies the photo and pans over to the leather. "Some kind of symbols.""Hey, you're right." Sam takes the phone from her and peers at it, then frowns in disappointment. "They're sort of blurry...""So?" Dean leans over impatiently. "Can't you, like, enhance or something?"Sam gives him an exasperated look. "This isn't some stupid crime show, Dean. I can try to clean the image up but—""Sam," says Dean helplessly. He locks eyes with his brother. "Just. Please. It's Cas."Sam's face softens. "I'll work on it," he sighs. "You guys should start looking for Cas's car.""Right," says Dean. He scrubs at his hair again, and reluctantly picks his phone back up. His jaw is aching with the force of how hard he's been clenching his teeth."Dean." His mom's slim fingers cover his own for a moment. She slides the phone out of his unresisting hand, closes out the photo of Cas before he can see it. "We'll find Castiel." She's wearing cheap cotton pajamas they picked up at a department store on their way out of Lebanon, her hair tangled and damp, the towel flung over her shoulders. At the moment, she looks nothing like a hunter, except for the steel in her eyes. But her voice is strong and sure and Dean lets himself relax into the certainty of it for just a moment. Lets himself believe her, repeats it like a mantra and tries to press down the tide of fear. We'll find him. We'll find him.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They search for three fucking days.The hours slide by, at once dragging and going too quickly. Dean paces the floor of the motel room, hating the confinement of the four walls, wanting to be on the road, driving—anywhere. Except he can't, because there's no way to know that whatever direction he would be driving wouldn't be taking him in the wrong direction, away from Cas.He calls Crowley. Yeah, screw Sam's logic, after the first twenty-four hours Dean picks up the phone and dials. No answer.Sam manages to lift a clearer image of the symbols from the cell phone picture. "Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs," he tells Dean, showing him the zoomed-in picture on his laptop. "They should be easy enough to translate." Dean nods, glad that with the screen filled by the blurry pictographs, he can't see Cas's pale face.Sam's statement proves to be too optimistic. "It's not just regular writing," he complains two days later, still bent over his laptop, "it's some kind of spell, and it's such a small fragment to go off of..."So shut up and get it done, some small part of Dean screams internally. He blocks the thought, ashamed. Sam's eyes are reddened by late nights and caffeine, the hollows underneath them a deep mauve color.Dean can't help thinking how much easier this would be if they were still in the Bunker, surrounded by the countless books and lore references gathered by the Men of Letters. Here, they only have the few volumes they'd snatched up before they'd locked up and fled the place. Too many dangers, he thinks grimly. All colliding at once.He and his mom having been skimming through news articles and police reports, searching for mentions of Cas's car, or a man fitting Cas's description. For someone who missed out on the last thirty years of technology, Mary picks up on the concept of a Google search pretty quickly.She's scrolling through a page of results now, forehead creased in a faint frown as she peruses the entries. It's a remarkably similar expression to the one that Sam, across the table, is also wearing, and at any other time Dean might have dwelled longer on the marvel of that. Instead, it only reminds him of Cas's frown—how it's a layered and variable expression, how it can signal concern, or irritation, or confusion, or deep thought, or so many other things.His throat seems to close up; the atmosphere of the room suddenly feels thick and oppressive. He mutters something about going out for air."Little cold for a walk," says Mary distractedly, not looking up from the laptop. It's true, the temperature's been dropping rapidly, but Dean doesn't leave the motel anyway. Instead he leans against a vending machine in the hallway and calls Crowley again. Voicemail. Fuck, he thinks.I don't know what to do, he thinks, not for the first time in the last seventy-two hours. I don't know how to find him. And then, before he can stop himself, Cas, you out there?He puts his phone away and laces his fingers together. "Cas," he mutters. "If you can hear me, we're looking for you, man. But we've got nothing to go on." He pauses. Funny, how he always expects an answer, even though he knows prayer is a one-way street."Cas, if you can hear me..." Then what? Come back, he wants to say. Come back to us. "...hang in there," he tries lamely. The sentiment tastes inadequate, hollow. "Be alive," he whispers instead, almost choking on the words because saying them acknowledges the chance of Cas not being alive. Acknowledges that Dean might never find Cas, might never get him back, never get to tell him—tell him—everything, anything, ever again. And it would be his fault.I should have gone with him, he thinks, clenching his clasped hands together until they ache. Light-headed with the truth of it, the guilt he can never deny—once again, Dean's let down someone he loves. He'd let Cas go off alone, the way he'd been letting Cas go off alone for—years, really. And if he never finds Cas again, then the last thing he'll have ever done to Cas will be letting him go.He lifts his hands, pressing them against his lips. "Be alive," he mouths into his crossed thumbs, the words soundless, useless. "Be alive, you son of a bitch."When he reenters the room, Sam is standing behind their mom's chair, reading the laptop screen over her shoulder. They both look up as Dean as he shuts the door."We found it," says Sam excitedly. "Mom found Cas's car.""Seriously?" Dean moves across the room, hope flaring in his chest. "You sure?""Plates match. Anyway, it's hard to mistake that piece of junk for anyone else's. Was found..." Sam squints at the screen. "By the side of the highway, with the doors open...""Where?""Colorado," says Mary. A hard glint is flashing in her eye. She smiles at Dean, a sharp, anticipatory smile. A let's go smile.Dean reaches for his jacket. "Let's freaking go."***They load up the Impala and drive and drive. Dean seems particularly disinclined to talk; he's gripping the steering wheel too tightly, his turns jerkier than normal despite the fact that his eyes are glued to the road ahead. Sam taps his fingers distractedly on his lap, trying not to think about the fact that they don't have much to go on, that this is only a slim wisp of a lead, that they might be too late anyway. He keeps hearing his own voice, repeated, as if his subconscious is trying to mock him. Dean, he'll be fine. He remembers wishing Cas good luck as their friend headed out the door. Remembers how he'd felt amused—amused, watching Dean brood over the absent angel.And yet Dean had been right to worry, and Sam had been an idiot. Maybe he'd just underestimated the danger. Or maybe he'd been so focused on the Men of Letters, he'd forgotten the other forms of evil that still stalked the world. Or maybe—his insides twist in shame—he just hadn't cared enough. Maybe he'd been so preoccupied with the presence of his mom, the miracle of it all, that he'd assumed everything would be fine. He'd let Cas throw himself on the fire once again; he'd let Dean do all the worrying. Par for the course, maybe—in the end, Dean is always the one who protects people, and Sam is the one who lets them down.We should have gone with him, Sam thinks. He should have had backup. It's not that Cas can't hold his own in a fight. But since when did they fly solo, since when did Cas just go off alone like that without any support from them? A long time, he realizes. Years.Had they, at some distant point in the past, just begun to take it for granted that Cas didn't need anyone to have his back?The truth, Sam thinks, is worse than that. The truth, really, is that they didn't think about it at all.Somewhere along the line, he supposes, he'd absorbed the idea that Cas would always survive. That Cas had some lingering invincibility left over from his days in Heaven's favor. That no matter what was thrown at him—curses, monsters, angels, insanity—Cas would be okay. Sam thinks of all times he's gone under thinking Cas was gone, and woken up to find Cas alive. Coming back from Hell, emerging from months of Lucifer-ridden hallucinations, waking up on the floor in that reaper's house in Detroit—Cas had always just been there, miraculously, always alive after all.He'll be fine, he thinks to himself. The lie of it digs painful claws into him. Cas isn't fine. Sam has the grainy, overexposed image on his cell phone to prove it. He'll be fine, he thinks again, emphasizing the future tense. They'll all be fine. Fine—the word echoes in his head, a ticking clock counting the hours since the text from Cas's phone, the time that's passed without them finding him. Fine fine fine fine.The miles and hours trickle past, marked by the ceaseless metronome of fine in Sam's head. They're a few exits from their destination (fine fine fine, goes the melody) when Dean's phone rings, a jarring interruption.Dean takes his eyes off the road briefly to glance at the screen, then blinks and fumbles in his haste to answer it. "Cas?!"Sam twists around in his seat, hope rising in his chest. But Dean's face is falling, disappointment softening his features before wariness makes them rigid again. He switches the call to speaker and holds the phone out."—however, I have spent the last few days enjoying the pleasure of his company." The voice is a cool female one, measured, with no trace of an accent."Who the hell are you?" demands Dean. "Where's Cas?""I'm looking at him, although he's...well. Somewhat indisposed to speak, at the moment.""Who are you?" Sam repeats. "What do you want?""Ah, Sam Winchester. I'm glad you're present. My name is Set."Set? their mom mouths, frowning. Sam shrugs; he doesn't recognize the name either."—as for what I want...first of all, face-to-face time with the infamous Winchesters.""Yeah? Give us some directions and you'll get plenty," snaps Dean."No, I'm not quite ready to receive you. This is just a chat. First contact, so to speak." Her speech is strangely jarring, an odd mixture of formal and informal language. And familiar, Sam realizes. Cas, he thinks. Cas talks like that."Listen, lady," says Dean, and his voice has gone from irate to deadly quiet. "I still don't know who you are. But if you know anything about us, you'll know that this isn't going to end well for you. Now—""I know quite a bit about you, Dean. Your favorite color is blue, for instance."Dean shoots Sam a bewildered look. "What the fuck are you talking about? We speed-dating now?"Set ignores the interruption. "It was four hours before Castiel would give that up." She sounds half-amused, half-perplexed. "He's a stubborn one, even for an angel. I assume he believed that I must have been planning to use the information against you in some way. Though how I would incorporate that fun fact into any sort of plan, I can't imagine."Sam squeezes his hands into fists, presses them into the sides of his knees. Cas, he thinks helplessly, oh, God, Cas."Even so, I really thought he would revise his stance after I started on his wings." Dean's breath hitches; his hand tightens around the phone. "Tell me, Dean, what did you do to inspire such dogged loyalty in a celestial being?"Sam shoots Dean a look. Don't rise, he thinks, shaking his head at his brother, who has a stricken look on his face, a muscle fluttering at the corner of his jaw. Don't take the bait."Your favorite band. Led Zeppelin. Only three hours for that one. Fortunate, because I was running out of places to cut.""You psycho," Dean chokes out. "Why are you—""Merely a way to pass the time. And I find it interesting, Castiel's protective instinct, his unwillingness to divulge anything about you and your brother, no matter how trivial.""What do you want? What good is that information to you?" says Sam, since Dean looks too horrified to say anything further."None whatsoever. Just plying my craft, Sam. Is there anything else I should ask him? Maybe he can tell me how you take your coffee, or which of you has better aim with a gun." She pauses, then adds, "Before you decide not to play along, remember it does give me a reason not to cut out his tongue."Dean seems to find his voice again. "You bitch—""Ahh, he's waking up. I'll think of something, I'm sure. Be in touch, Winchesters.""Don't—"There's a click; the line goes silent."She's bluffing," says Sam immediately. He's not sure if he believes himself, but at the moment he's willing to speculate. Anything to wipe the rigid, terrified look off Dean's face."Was she right? I thought your favorite color was orange," Mary says."It's. No. Yeah, it's blue. She wasn't bluffing." Dean's voice is hoarse, barely above a whisper; his knuckles are white against the steering wheel. He's staring blankly ahead."Yeah, but does Cas know that?" says Sam. "She still could have been lying about torturing him." The words are spilling out of him, a hasty barrier against his imagination, which busy populating his brain with images of Castiel, tortured, Castiel, bleeding, Castiel, hurt—stop it. Stop it. Keep it together. "Maybe she just made a lucky guess, there aren't that many colors—""She's not lying, Sam! Shit." Dean curses under his breath. "Shit, shit—""You're going out of the lane," their mother says urgently.Dean jerks the car viciously over to the shoulder of the highway and puts it into park, breathing shakily. "Sorry. Sorry, I just need to—" His voice cracks. He presses a hand against his forehead. "Cas knows," he mutters from behind his wrist. "We had some...stupid conversation, a couple months back. Dude asked me what my favorite color was, I told him it was blue. Which, I dunno, who thinks about that kind of thing anyway?"It's true, Sam thinks. He can't remember the last time he thought about having a favorite color, the last time that was a relevant matter. Does he even have a favorite color? It doesn't seem to be the kind of luxury afforded to people like them."Alright. I'm guessing she was also right about your favorite band," says their mom carefully from the back seat. "Why? What's the point, is it some kind of psychological thing?""It's." Sam watches as Dean stops and squeezes his eyes shut. "Uh. It's." He swallows, his voice suddenly going soft, like he doesn't want them to hear the words. "In Hell, they used to do that. I used to do that."Stop, Sam wants to say. He has the sudden urge to reach out and shake Dean by the shoulders, silence him, spare him from having to dredge up these memories, the burning weight of them. In the back, their mom has gone very still."It was...you give them something to push against, you know? The...person. The soul. You ask them questions. Or tell them to...to do things. Give them choices. Stupid stuff, at first. Little stuff. The strong ones always resist on principle. They fight, and you..." Dean pauses, his eyes glassy."I," he corrects after a beat, the word deliberate, merciless, "would keep at it...until they convince themselves that it doesn't really matter, that it's such a small thing, it's worth it to make the pain stop." He brushes a hand across his eyes, the motion so quick and flitting that Sam almost misses it. "Break them on the little stuff first, they'll fall faster and faster every time, until they're...""Hey." Their mom leans forward, squeezing Dean's shoulder, pressing her hand against his cheek. "It's alright, Dean."It's not alright, Sam thinks, his vision blurring as he looks away from Dean. He wants to add his voice to their mother's, pull Dean out of the dark crevice of remembrance, the product of forty years of the finest torture Hell's demons could dream up, but he can't make the words come out of his mouth. Can't say it's alright even as a comforting lie, not when he's remembering that awful photo of Cas. Not when he's imagining Cas's ragged breathing, not when his nostrils are filled with the scent of blood (God, it shouldn't be so easy for him to imagine the smell of blood), not when he knows that no matter how vivid the picture in his mind, Dean is doing a better job of imagining it.Fine fine fine fine fine, ticks the clock, the words like ash falling."It's not alright, Mom," Dean is saying, voicing the thoughts bouncing off the walls of Sam's head. "That's—this is what she's doing to Cas. She's torturing him, and he's an angel—you don't understand, angels heal, like souls, she won't have to be careful, she won't have to hold back—" He breaks off for a moment, his breathing unsteady, then plows on, "—and we have no freaking idea where he is, do we? None. She's had him for how many fucking days now, and we have no fucking clue." He slams his palms against the steering wheel."Dean," Sam breaks in, finally managing speech. "Let me drive." He wants to have something to focus on besides the thrum of guilt and fear, something to look at besides his brother's heart, fracturing before his eyes."No, I'm fine, Sam, I just—""Neither of you is fine," interrupts Mary from the back seat, unbuckling her seatbelt. "Out, Dean. I'm driving." She cuts off the beginning of Dean's renewed protest. "Or we'll go off the side of the road before we've gone a mile.""Be careful with the shift, it sticks a little," Dean says, as he reluctantly trades places with their mother. He speaks gruffly, his voice pitched even lower than usual, and Sam can practically hear the walls going back up. "And the wheel turns back faster than you'd expect—""Dean." Mary eases the car onto the highway, accelerates smoothly. "I was driving this car before you boys were born."They drive in silence for a few minutes. Sam keeps eyeing the rearview mirror, watching Dean stare morosely out the window. He can't help remembering the last time this particular configuration occurred: him in the passenger seat, Dean in the back, a parent at the wheel. (The sudden impact of the truck, the flash of light and then darkness.) His hands twitch in his lap. This isn't like that. They're all going to come out of this one alive. Even Cas.He plays the conversation over in his mind, searching for any clue, any hint. The results aren't hopeful—Set had mentioned nothing that would give away her location. Sam grimaces, frustrated. The clock in his head ticks. At least it had sounded like she planned to keep Cas alive."So," Dean says finally, breaking the quiet. "We need to figure out who this chick is.""Well, she must be strong enough to overpower an angel," says their mom immediately, and Sam wonders if she too had been turning over the pieces of the conversation. She holds out one hand, ticking points off on her fingers. "She tortures to pass the time. She uses techniques used in," her voice falters for a moment but holds steady, "in Hell.""Yeah, and she said 'plying her craft'," Sam points out, ignoring the feeling of distaste the phrase conjures up. "Like it was her job.""Sounds like a demon, then." Dean's voice is level, his face unnervingly calm. "A strong one. You think?"Their mom hums in agreement. Sam takes a moment to study the window, watching the landscape rush by. Aloud, he says, "I think we call Crowley."
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Cas's hand on his face, Cas's fingertips rough against his skin. The aches from his fight with the ghoulpire recede under the cooling influx of Cas's grace, and he can feel the stinging cuts across his face closing up.
Dean rolls his shoulder, pleased at the absence of any lingering soreness. "Thanks."
Cas slowly lowers his hand. "Of course, Dean." He sounds so pleased, as if Dean's the one doing him a favor. It makes Dean feel like kind of an asshole, honestly, more so when he remembers how hurt Cas had looked, days ago when Dean had refused to be healed.
"Listen, I'm sorry for being a dick about it, before. I just..." He doesn't know how to explain it, the desire to hold on to the residual pain of Cas's witch-powered punches, how the blood in his mouth had tasted like atonement.
"Dean, I understand." Cas drops his eyes for only a moment before meeting Dean's again. His voice is low but sure. "What it is to feel guilt. To feel that you should suffer, as your penance...I understand it. I've been there." He looks at Dean earnestly, his gaze open the way Cas's gaze always is, somehow blunt and hesitant at the same time.
Dean's suddenly aware of how close Cas is standing; he'd moved right up into Dean's space, as usual, to heal him, and he hasn't stepped back. Dean can count Cas's eyelashes, see the delicate fractal patterns in his irises, blue against blue. He's not wearing his trench coat, just the rumpled white dress shirt, and seeing him like this is odd, as if he's partially unclothed, even though he's technically fully dressed. It's unsettling, in a strange, not-altogether-unpleasant way that Dean isn't prepared to think about right now. He casts about for something mundane to talk about, something to ease the electric awareness that's bloomed in his chest, at Cas's nearness. "How's the Netflix rabbit hole?"
"Good," Castiel answers. He furrows his brow slightly. "Though as I said before, I am puzzled by the importance and meaning placed on various colors."
"Well, colors are important to humans," says Dean, trying and failing to look anywhere but Cas's eyes. "Symbolic, you know." He thinks ruefully that Sam would do a better job of explaining the importance of color in human society. But Cas drew the short straw when they were handing out guides to humanity, and wound up with Dean Winchester.
"The symbolism is lost on me."
"Well, me too, sometimes. Not everybody thinks of colors the same way, they're not just facts, they're...people interpret them differently—different cultures, you know, so colors have different meaning to different people..." He's rambling now, afraid of letting silence unfurl between him and Cas, of what else might fill it. They're so close that if he leaned forward—
"What color has meaning to you?"
Dean snorts. "Dude, are you asking me my favorite color? Really? What's next, we going to have a pillow fight and talk about our crushes?"
Cas says nothing, just stares at him, nonplussed, a faint crease still lingering on his forehead. "I don't understand," he says finally, and he sounds—uncertain, as if he's picking up that he's said something wrong, but isn't sure why.
For the second time in as many minutes, Dean feels like an asshole. "I dunno, Cas," he says, relenting. "Nobody really actually thinks about that stuff." He casts his mind around for a color. Yellow, purple—what other colors even are there? He's totally blanking, and Cas is still just staring at him with that lost look.
"Blue," Dean blurts finally.
"The color of the sky," says Cas, nodding slowly, though Dean only half-notices because he's thinking to himself that Cas looks so fucking tired, lately. Like he's crumbling away. But that can't be it. Cas has his mojo back. No more witch curse, no more borrowed grace. He probably just needs rest. He ought to be conserving his grace, not healing the asshole hunters in his life. "The color of lapis lazuli."
Dean raises his eyebrows. "Whatever you say, dude."
He half-wants to order Cas back to bed, tuck the blankets down around him and pour bowl after bowl of soup down his throat, the way he used to do when Sam was young and caught a cold. But Cas is an angel now, fully-powered—he doesn't need that kind of thing. And Dean hadn't exactly done right by him, either, when he'd briefly been human. The shame of the remembrance makes him itch to get away, to hide from the warmth of Cas's gaze.
"Listen, I've got to go take care of my baby, this case put her through the wringer." He doesn't wait for Cas to take the hint, just turns and heads for the garage.
"Dean," says Cas insistently, from behind him, his voice changing. "Dean. Dean.""Dean. Wake up." It's Sam's voice; Dean twitches and blinks his eyes open, looking around in disorientation. It takes him several seconds to realize he's in the Impala, but in the back seat."I'm awake," he insists groggily, batting away Sam's hand so that he can climb out. The sun is sinking lower in the sky, he notes with dismay. Another day gone by with Cas still in Set's unknown clutches.Sam hands him a duffel bag. "Here's the supplies for the summoning ritual. You and Mom set it up, I'm going to head to the impound lot to check out Cas's car."Dean's tongue feels clumsy and dry. "Where," he says, squinting at the building in front of them, trying to bring his brain back online. I should have asked him what his favorite color was. I should have fucking asked."Already got a room," says Sam. "We wanted to let you sleep a little longer." His eyes are too gentle, too understanding, and Dean hates it, wants to crawl back into the Impala and shut the door, shut himself in with the dark weight of guilt and memories.***In the room, Dean unzips the duffel and begins laying out the items they'll need to summon Crowley.He starts to draw the summoning sigil, scraping the stub of chalk along the dull green carpet. It's difficult to concentrate; he keeps hearing Set's soft cold voice, the words that hit like hammer blows.
It was four hours before Castiel would give that up.
After I started on his wings...
Cut out his tongue....
He shakes it off, trying to focus on the sigil. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches his mother stealing glances between the sigil on the carpet and the representation in the open book on the floor."Don't worry, we're not on Crowley's bad side right now." He tries to make his smile reassuring, though it's difficult when Set's threats are still coiling in his head. "He's not going to try to charbroil us if the sigil isn't exactly right.""Sorry," sighs Mary. "Just apprehensive, I suppose. Last time I did something like this it turned out...poorly." Her tone indicates that she realizes this is a massive understatement."You still don't think this a good idea, huh."His mom grimaces at the bowl of herbs she's crushing. "No. But sometimes what's necessary isn't always a good idea.""Yeah, don't I know it."They work in silence for a while."You're worried about him."Of course I'm fucking worried about him, Dean thinks. But he doesn't say that, instead sitting back on his haunches to look at his mother. "You're not?""I am," says Mary slowly. "I've only known him for a week, but I'd like to get to know him better. And it doesn't seem like you and Sam have a lot of friends." She smiles sadly."Yeah," says Dean, because what else can he say to that? "Yeah, Cas is probably the best friend we've got."Mary picks at a loose thread in the hem of her pants. "You told me about the things he did, and they seem terrible..." She toys with a candle, spinning it in her hands. "But it's hard to imagine Castiel doing them."Dean remembers Cas full of fury and fire, Cas pinning him up against a wall, Cas scowling defiantly out from within a circle of lapping flames. "I know he doesn't look it, but believe me, he still packs a solid punch." He smiles, but it quickly fades as he thinks of how Cas had looked all last year. The times that it had been Cas, anyway. (The memory of Lucifer's bombastic swagger still leaves a sour taste in his mouth.) "I guess we sort of...wore him down.""That's not what I meant," objects Mary. "It's just...he seems...good, in a way that a lot of people aren't. It's hard to think of him hurting you or Sam, or helping to start the Apocalypse, or releasing the...Leviathan, you called them?"Dean nods. "I know. He made mistakes. Hell, we all did. He always meant well. He knows we don't blame him."Mary looks skeptical. "Does he? He seems like the type to carry guilt around.""Guess he got that from us." Dean takes the bowl from Mary and starts to add bone fragments and scraps of inked paper. "I hope he knows." God, Cas, I hope you know. He tries to remember if he'd made it clear to Cas. The past is a maelstrom of the things he has and hasn't told Cas, what he does and doesn't want Cas to know, and sometimes he isn't even sure which is which."You don't think we'll find him?""It's not that." Frustrated, he sweeps up the rest of the ingredients with his hands and drops them unceremoniously into the bowl. He's on edge, anxious, and he wonders what's taking Sam so long. "I just—he shouldn't even be in this situation. Lucifer, and now running off on his own, getting captured."His mom says nothing, so Dean finds himself continuing. "Cas—he's not like the other angels, Mom, he's—so much better, and he's always been in our corner, and Sam and I, we're so fucking wrapped up in the next hunt, the next problem, we never—" He corrects himself, forces himself not to take refuge in the shared blame of plural pronons. "I never—thank him.""I'm sure he knows how you feel," says Mary.Dean almost laughs, thinking of every snide word he's thrown at Cas, every dismissal, every betrayal. "I've let him down, Mom. So many freaking times." Dragged him down, more like. He'd pulled Cas down into the muck and the dirt where humans crawl, and every time Cas had fallen Dean had left him to fend for himself. He suddenly remembers that blonde angel with the massive chip on her shoulder, years ago—Hester, that was her name. The very touch of you corrupts."And it wouldn't even be a big deal, you know? Back in the beginning he could just shake that stuff off, he was—you have no idea what kind of power he had. And he gave it all up, for us. For humanity. And we let him down. I let him down. I let this happen to him." He isn't even sure what he means by this. This is Set, this is Lucifer and Rowena and Metatron and a whole list of other things, big and small, stretching all the way back to the first time Cas had stepped into the line of fire for them."He's an angel, Dean. He's thousands of years old. It's not your job to protect him.""It's not a job, it's—" Dean breaks off, uncertain of how to word it, of how to describe the surge of caring, the fierce desire to protect (cherish, shield, hold, watch over) that fights to be free whenever he sees Cas. We'll be okay—it had slipped out, wordless, in his prayer, before he locked it away again. You and me, Cas—but he hadn't said it, he hadn't said it and he doesn't know if he wants Cas to have heard it, he doesn't know where it fits into the maelstrom. He beats it down, he always beats it down, because if there's one thing he knows it's that his touches cause harm and not healing, that his hands have smashed Cas apart more than they've ever put him back together, that after this and this and this, his help (you and me, Cas) is the last thing Cas can possibly want."I know," says his mom gently. "You care for each other." She's studying Dean with an odd look in her eyes, and her words are half-statement, half-question. There are a half-dozen ways he could interpret the sentence, and he can't deny any of them. So yeah. He can't tell her she's wrong, but that's just part of the problem. Dean's never been able to care for anything right, never been able to hold onto anything in a way that didn't twist and wreck it, never been able to keep anything (because you've never been able to let go, a tiny voice inside snipes) and where the fuck is Sam?His silence brings a slight hint of discomfort to his mom's face. "Dean, you don't have to hide anything—""That's not—Mom, there isn't—he's a freaking angel. And I'm. Just." Just not allowed, is what. Not after everything he's done. Not when Dean has one foot in the Pit where Alastair remade him, not when darkness seeps into everything that has the misfortune to be in his life. The moment Castiel laid a hand on you he was lost. He's let Cas down more times than he can count and somehow he still thinks he has the right to count himself a protector, a shield? You and me, Cas. He won't do it, won't say it, won't hammer the final nail into the coffin and drag Cas down even further.He stands up, runs shaking hands through his hair. "The longer he's with us, with me, the more it screws him up." He's aware that his voice is rising, that his words quake and tremble like his hands. He sits down on the nearer bed in order to keep from pacing."Sam and me, we're not—we're not good. For him. For anyone. Our lives are so messed up and no matter what I do I can't stop that, and Cas—he's stepped up for us again and again, and every time it leaves him worse off. He's goes off to try to be a hero for us and it gets him killed. And he keeps coming back, he always trusts us, he always fights with us, and I can't stop fucking breaking him." It's the fear that's dogged his footsteps for years, the fear that makes him turn away from Cas's solid, reassuring presence, the fear that he has to shove away every time he looks at Cas's tired eyes. "He'd be fine if it weren't for me, he'd be freaking golden, but the son of a—the guy does know me, and that's what happens to him. That's what happens to everybody. The people around me get hurt. It doesn't matter what I do, who I try to protect, I let them down, I get them killed, I'm fucking poison, Mom."His mom is silent for a long moment. Then she rises from the summoning set-up and comes to join him on the bed. Dean can't bring himself to meet her gaze, so he shoots a sideways look at her, out of the corner of his eye. She's staring into the distance, her expression thoughtful."When I was pregnant with Sam," she says finally, "I worried about how you would react to having a sibling. I tried to get you excited about it but on the whole you seemed very...skeptical." She smiles. "You'd ask questions like 'will I have to share my toys with him' and 'will he be fun' and 'Mom, what if he's ugly.'" She chuckles, and Dean cracks a smile in spite of himself."But then we brought him home from the hospital," Mary's voice dips with wonder, "and you were just...spellbound by him. Couldn't take your eyes off him. Brought him your favorite stuffed animal. Wouldn't stop asking questions, except now they were things like 'is he warm enough' and 'can I give him one of my racecars' and 'can he hear me if I say his name.' And then at the end of the night you looked at me and you said, 'Mom, I love him.'" She smiles again. "And I knew, right then, that you'd be the most wonderful older brother. That you'd always take care of him, not because it was your job, but because you loved him.""Well, if I'd known what a pain he was going to be I wouldn't have said that," Dean jokes weakly.Mary ignores him. "And I see the way you two are now, and I know that I was right, Dean. Not just about you and Sam specifically, but about you, Dean. About the way you are. About the way you love."She touches his shoulder, directing his gaze to hers. "Dean. I may not know much about who you are now. You and Sam, I've missed out on your whole lives." Her voice wobbles for the barest moment before she covers it with a pause and a faint smile. "For heaven's sake, I thought your favorite color was still orange. But I've only been here for a week and I can already see that what I knew then is still true—that you love whole-heartedly, that you love with all your might, that your love is a love that protects and guards and gives."Dean finds that he has a sudden lump in his throat. He swallows hard, trying to clear it, trying to get words out, though he doesn't know what he would say. Mary tightens her grip on his shoulder. "So you're not poison to Castiel, Dean. Your love is never poison."And Dean's still trying to wrap his mind around that, to deal with the sincerity radiating from every word his mom has just laid out in front of him, to face the shape of the warm and glowing thing that has a sudden hold on his heart, when Sam bursts into the room."Dude, where you been? We've been waiting to summon Crowley.""Forget Crowley for a minute, guys. Look at this." Sam yanks his laptop out of his bag, scattering photo print-outs and scrawled notes on the hieroglyphs."Did you find Cas's car?""Yeah, and I checked it for prints, sulfur, blood, ectoplasm, the whole nine yards. It's clean. But there was a receipt for a gas station in town, and I checked their security footage." He's holding the laptop in the palm of one plate-sized hand, typing with the other. "Here—check it out."Dean studies the grainy video playing on the screen. Sure enough, there's Cas's car by one of the gas pumps, looking washed-out and dingy in the de-saturated camera feed. And Cas himself, leaning against the driver's side door, hands in his pockets. Dean feels his throat close up. He glances at the date in the corner. Four days ago.A petite woman in jeans and a short white jacket appears on the feed. She walks up to Cas and touches him on the arm."There," says Mary unnecessarily. Dean is already craning his head forward, trying to make out her features. Her face is blurry and indistinct, too much so to see if her eyes are the telltale jet-black. But they must not be, for after a moment Cas nods and gestures toward his car, and the woman walks around to the passenger side and gets in."Think that's our girl?" says Dean. With a pang, he watches Cas get into the car, watches the Continental peel away from the pump and off-screen. Be alive.Sam shrugs. "Seems likely. I mean, there's not much between here and where they found his car. I talked to the gas station owner and he said he'd never seen her before. He thought she was a hitchhiker.""So maybe she asked him for a ride," says their mom. "And then overpowered him on the road, or convinced him to leave his car."Which seems plausible. Cas is so fucking trusting that Dean can definitely imagine him offering a ride to any lost-looking soul, unsuspecting of the hellspawn nested inside. Aloud, he says, "Right, so let's beam up Crowley, see what he knows, then start scoping out this town, see if anyone's seen a brunette chick in a mini-jacket.""Bolero jacket."Dean stares at his brother. "Bless you.""It's called a bolero jacket." Sam sets the laptop on the table and reaches for the knife they use for summoning rituals. "They were inspired by Spanish bullfighters' outfits."Dean points at him. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just say all that."***Crowley looks a little worse for wear. Of course, in his case, a little worse just means that his suit jacket doesn't appear as immaculately pressed as usual."This better be good," he says testily, as Sam lowers the now-bloodied knife. Then his eyes fall on Mary and he whistles. "Family reunion, I see. Will your dear old dad be joining us too?""Cut it out, Crowley," says Dean, watching their mom's face tighten with anger. He isn't sure he wants to know how Crowley recognized Mary."We have questions," Sam says."Oh, you have questions," the demon snaps sarcastically. "Well, by all means, lay them on me." He spreads his arms. "It's not like I have anything more important to do than serve as your personal Multivac." Dean rolls his eyes at Sam as Crowley continues, voice rising irately. "Such as, I don't know, trying to reclaim Hell, which, may I remind you, was stolen from me by Lucifer, who, may I remind you, was wearing the meatsuit of your pet angel, who, may I remind you, is the reason he's free in the first place!""It's actually about Cas," says Dean. "He's missing. We think—""Did you not hear the last part of my little speech? The part where your precious Castiel is the reason I'm out of a bloody throne? Do I look like I care what happens to him?""We think he's been captured by a demon," says Sam flatly."Which makes it your business," Mary adds. "Unless you're less the King of Hell than Dean and Sam have been telling me."Crowley raises his eyebrows. The pause is long enough for Sam to hastily put in, "Her name is Set.""Never heard of her. Black eyes?"Dean exchanges a look with Sam. "We haven't seen her eyes," he says reluctantly. He's dismayed by Crowley's lack of reaction to the name, and he wonders if Set gave them her real name. It wouldn't be the first time a demon went by another title.Crowley snorts. "Well, then I'm off." He starts to turn away."We know she's a demon, alright?" Dean snaps. "And she's got Cas, and she's definitely up to something, so we've got to—""You've got squat," Crowley says, "and if you think I'm going to sit here and listen to a save-Cas speech for the second time in as many months, you're out of your sodding mind.""This isn't about Castiel," says Mary coldly. Dean turns and stares at her in disbelief, but her eyes are fixed on Crowley. "At least, not for you. For you it's about a demon, a powerful one, one that you're apparently unaware of, who's planning something that could very well have consequences for you, and it seems you're completely in the dark about it."Nice one, Dean thinks, impressed, as Crowley shuts up and gives their mom a narrow, evaluative look."Alright," he says finally. "I'll hear you out."Sam summarizes the phone call in a few terse sentences. "We think she might—might have tortured in Hell. And here—" he turns his laptop towards Crowley and plays back the security footage.Crowley shakes his head. "I can definitely confirm that the dimwit in the trench is your angel, if that's what you were uncertain about," he says acidly. "As for the girl, no idea. Not that it would mean anything—a camera's only going to pick up on the human container, not the demon.""So you're saying you don't recognize her," says Dean. Disappointment wells up inside him."Not a bit." Crowley slides his hands into his pockets. "Color me intrigued, though. I don't recognize her name and believe it or not, Mrs. Winchester," he inclines his head mockingly toward their mom, "before Lucifer torched my HR department, I was in the habit of keeping track of my staff. So it's unusual that her name isn't ringing any bells. Assuming you boneheads are right and she is a demon.""Great, so we're right where we started," says Dean."Maybe. What else have you got?""Not much," says Sam, exhaling in frustration. "We think she has Cas wearing some kind of—well—" He picks up one of the zoomed-in photographs from the floor and hands it to Crowley, who snorts at Cas's wrecked face and then examines the corner of the photograph closely."Do you know what they are?" says Dean."I speak every language known to man and quite a few on top of that, of course I know what they are." Crowley rotates the photo and squints. "It's ancient Egyptian—""Yeah, we figured that out, thanks—""—but, if you'll permit me to finish, it's a peculiar dialect. Or script, rather. Think cursive compared to print. You know, you boys really ought to splurge and buy your pet a nicer phone, the camera quality on this one seems to be atrocious.""Get to the point, Crowley!"Crowley sighs and waves the sheet of paper. "This particular convention was used for rituals by an order of priests devoted to the worship of the deity Set." He shrugs. "Or so I've heard. That was a bit before my time.""Wait, wait, Set?" says Dean. "Her name is Set. You're telling me we're dealing with a god here?""No, I've met the real Set. Rather dreary fellow. Bit of a one-track mind, if you know what I mean. Never ran across anyone with such massive brother issues." He looks pointedly at them. "Obviously, that was before I met you two.""Fuck off," says Dean half-heartedly.Crowley sniffs. "I expect she's merely a namesake. Dedicated to Set as a baby, perhaps. Or a member of his temple. It wasn't unusual, in those times. But that would make her—""Ancient," finishes Mary.Not as ancient as Cas, Dean thinks. The thought comforts him, that Cas has been around for longer than this chick. Cas can outlast her. Survive her. Cas can survive anything."If she's an older demon," says Sam, "that could explain why you don't know about her."Crowley shakes his head. "No, it wouldn't. Even Hell has records of its senior citizens." He frowns at the page. "This is some kind of spell, but it's old magic. There aren't many instances to it left intact.""But there are some others?" says Dean. His spirits are rising a little, buoyed by the influx of new information. The more they know about Set, the better chance they have against her."Your hopefulness is touching, Dean." Crowley folds up the photograph. "I'll take a look. Not out of the goodness of my heart, but because, as your mum so astutely pointed out, this seems to concern Hell, and therefore me." He lifts one eyebrow. "Don't call me, I'll call you."And he's gone."So...he seemed like kind of an asshole," says their mom.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Set calls the next morning, while Dean is brushing his teeth, glancing into the mirror more often than he needs to so that he can steal glances at his mom, who's sitting against the headrest of her bed, flipping through one of the old books of lore.She calls Sam this time. Dean hears the ring and pokes his head out of the bathroom in time to see Sam gingerly setting the device on the table, handling it as if it's a snake."Good morning, Winchesters." Set's voice issues tinnily from the phone and Dean all but drops the toothbrush as he hastens to stand by Sam. His mom slowly sits up straight, keeping one finger in the book to hold her page. "What do you want, Set?" Sam's voice is hard and steady, which Dean is grateful for. The sound of Set's voice somehow has his stomach flipping over and contracting at the same time. He hates the power that she holds, hates the way he's hanging onto the words she speaks because he has to, because she has Cas. He realizes that he's squeezing the toothbrush so tightly that the contoured rubber grip is digging into his palm."I want to set up our meeting, Sam Winchester. I thought we could sit and chat. Are you not eager to see Castiel?"Sam glances at Dean, his gaze focused. Dean can practically see the wheels turning inside his brother's head. This is okay, Sam's expression is telling him. This is what we're expecting. Sam's right, of course, and Dean works on convincing himself that everything is going to be fine, that he needs stay calm, that they need to play Set even while she thinks she's playing them.Of course, that all goes out the window when Set adds, "He's certainly eager to see you, if the number of times he's screamed your names is any indication."Dean snatches the phone off the table—bitch, he wants to snarl into it, bitch, piece of shit, psycho, and I'll fucking kill you—but he restrains himself to the point of only growling, "After everything you've done you're crazy if you think we'll just sit down for a beer.""Dean, have I indicated any desire for peace?" He hates that her voice never wavers, never rises, that it only continues in its smooth dispassionate tones. "I have no illusions that this will be a pleasant meeting. It is, however, the only way you'll see the angel alive again. So you will do as I say." She pauses long enough for Dean to shoot a furious, helpless glance at Sam."We know you're a demon," he says. It's a risk, since they don't technically know it for sure, but the pause on the other end of the line seems to indicate that the statement struck home."Did you figure that out all by yourself, Dean?" she says finally."Why? Afraid Crowley ratted you out?" Sam is now giving him an exasperated look—stop showing our hand, Dean—but Dean doesn't give a shit, he just wants to rattle her, he wants to find something that'll catch her off guard, he fucking wants to hear fear in her voice. He wants her to feel the ground drop away from her feet the way it keeps doing for him."I'm not afraid of Crowley," she snaps, and it sounds like he might have partially succeeded, because she sounds, if not afraid, at least angry. "Or of what he knows, which is nothing.""So much for not speaking ill of your boss, huh?" Dean says derisively. "Office loyalty just not what it used to be, I guess.""Crowley is not my ruler," she says coldly. "Now. Have you found Castiel's car yet?"She doesn't know where we are, Dean realizes. "No," he lies automatically, because anything she doesn't know is something they might be able to use against her. "He was heading to Colorado. That where you are?""Interesting, I thought you would be on the trail by now." She sounds genuinely disappointed. "Yes, the car was abandoned in Colorado. I will give you some time—""We're still in Nebraska.""Three hours will be sufficient, I'm sure, for you to find the car.""We're farther than three hours away," Dean challenges. "Give us more time.""I'll give you thirteen hours. But after the first three I'll start cutting off fingers. One for each of the other ten.""You—""My rules, Dean Winchester. In three hours I will text you the exact address for our meeting.""And what, we just stroll in and have a heart to heart?" says Sam warily. Dean glances at the bed. Their mom has set the book aside and is watching, her expression taut with interest."If you'd like to think of it that way," says Set. "I want you and your brother to come alone and unarmed."Like hell, Dean thinks. Aloud, he says, "How do we know you haven't killed him?" It stings, the question, ripping something inside him and smarting all the way down, but he forces himself to ask, makes his voice as brazen as he can. "How do we know he's still alive?""I rather think that's something you'll risk," Set says smugly. "However, he is right here...and awake, for once. Would you like to hear him, Dean Winchester?""Cas?" Dean bites the word off sharply, afraid that his voice will catch. His heart beats faster and he stares down at the phone, just a piece of metal and plastic in his hand, a thin lifeline connecting him to Cas. There's no answer except Set's voice, lilting, cruel. "He isn't being quite cooperative. But I'll let your hear him if you'd like, Dean. Ask me to make him speak."Dean stands frozen, the phone clutched in his hand. Because Cas isn't going to speak, he's certain of that. No, Cas, the stupid self-sacrificing son of a bitch, isn't going to want them to know he's still alive, not if it means them walking into Set's open arms. Under the pretext of setting his toothbrush down, he rests one hand on the table, putting his weight on it, afraid that his knees will give out, that he'll crumple over the phone and beg the way Set wants him to. He's torn between the need to hear Cas, to know that he's still there, and the gut-clenching certainty that Set will twist the request into more pain for his friend."Ask me, Dean."Dean, agonized, meets Sam's eyes. And Sam, understanding as always, reaches out and tugs the phone gently out of his grasp. "Set," he says. "If you want this meeting to go your way, we need proof that Cas is alive."In the silence that follows, there comes through the speakers a ragged, rhythmic sound. It's the sound of breathing, Dean realizes. He's listening to Cas breathe. It's muffled and indistinct, and interspersed with faint, irregular hitches, as if Cas is struggling to force air into his lungs. Dean is well acquainted with the various injuries that could obstruct a person's breathing, and the list rolls unprompted through his head as he stands listening to that soft sound.There's a thud and a sharp cry of pain, and it's messed up, Dean thinks, that he can identify it as unmistakably Cas's voice, the sound of Cas in pain. A faint rustle issues from the phone, and then, suddenly, Cas is speaking, the sound shaky and rasping. "Dean, Sam, are you alright? You have to—" He breaks off with a muffled grunt."Cas?" says Sam in alarm. Dean, hanging on to the table with one hand, is too busy replaying Cas's voice. The rough burr of it, the gravelly urgency that hadn't completely hidden the waver of agony beneath.Set's voice returns. "That should be sufficient." It isn't a question. "I'll see you this afternoon, Winchesters.""Cas!" Dean finds his voice at last, grabbing Sam's wrist and pulling the phone in close. "Cas, you listen to me, we are going to get you out. Just hang—"A click interrupts him as Set ends the call. Dean releases Sam's wrist in disgust. Son of a bitch, he thinks. Son of a bitch.Their mom, who'd been silent during the call, says quietly, "What do we do now?"Dean doesn't answer immediately, turning to pick up his toothbrush with exaggerated care and using the motion as cover to turn his back on his mom and brother, so that he can shut his eyes tightly for a moment. He hopes Set still had the phone on speaker, that Cas heard him. Cas, he prays, hoping that Cas can hear that too. We're coming for you, we'll get you out.***"If you think I'm just going to sit here and—" Their mother's voice has been rising steadily throughout the argument."If you think we're just going to let you walk into a definite trap—" Dean's voice has matched hers decibel for decibel."Oh, so it's alright for you and Sam to get yourselves killed—""We're not going to get ourselves killed—""Guys." Sam, quiet, pained. "Can we focus, please.""Mom." Dean makes an effort to speak calmly. "We're not going to get killed. We're going to make a plan, okay? But it's going to be dangerous.""Then you need all the backup you can get." His mom is wearing a look of mulish stubbornness, and Dean again thinks about how much simpler things were back when the expression was exclusive to Sam's face. "You think I can't handle it? The fact that I'm your mother doesn't make me any less a hunter."Dean looks to Sam for help. "We're not trying to protect you, Mom," says Sam, fucking diplomatic as always. "But it doesn't make sense for all three of us to walk into a trap.""It doesn't make sense for any of us to walk into a trap," says Mary obstinately.Dean throws his hands up. "Of course it doesn't! But we don't have a whole lot of options here, do we? We need to get to Cas.""And what, just walk in there and hope we can whisk him away before she kills him? Or us?" says Sam."Whose side are you on?" snaps Dean.Sam cops a bitch-face to match their mom's. "This isn't about sides. We can't help Cas if we're dead.""Yeah, I get that, Sam. But if the only way to save Cas is to walk into this meeting and play it by ear then that's what I'll do." And he means it; if he has to hand himself over to Set in order to see Cas again, then he'll do it, and figure out the next step, and damn the consequences."You mean that's what we'll do," says Sam.Dean exhales. Because yeah, throwing himself into a trap and trusting to luck is one thing, but risking Sam, that's another thing. "Alright, look, we've got three hours now, we can keep looking for an advantage. She's got to be nearby, we don't need to wait for her to give us an address, we'll catch her by surprise. She doesn't know we have Crowley on our side, that gives us an edge." He doesn't know if any of what he's saying is true, he just knows that he can't risk their mom, can't save Cas—because they will save Cas—only to lose her.He turns back to their mom, who is still scowling. "Mom," he pleads. "We can't—I can't—I need you to be out of danger, okay? You just got here." He fumbles for the words. "And I need—if something goes south, I need someone else to be here for Cas, in case. Just in case." That won't happen, he tells himself. That won't happen.His mom looks at him for a long moment. Her expression softens. "Alright," she says finally. It sounds begrudging, but sincere. "Alright, Dean."There's something in her eyes that's too close to pity, and suddenly Dean needs air. He mutters something about phoning Crowley and bolts for the door.***It turns out he doesn't need to phone Crowley, because he's only leaned against the outside of the building for a minute when a silky voice says, "Sulking all alone, Dean?"He looks up as Crowley saunters over, feet crunching in the gravel. "You look like the owner of the canary that the cat just ate," he comments.Dean doesn't have time for Crowley's bullshit. "Set called again. And by the way? She's definitely a demon."Crowley has the grace to look troubled. "I perused the records of Hell—""You can still get to those? You didn't get your, I don't know, King of Hell key-card revoked?""I knew the ins and outs of Hell long before I took the throne, Dean," says the demon icily. "As I was saying, I've looked through the contract records and the old annals, and there are mentions of a demon who rose quickly through the ranks, several thousand years ago.""And you think that could be her?""You aren't listening," says Crowley with martyred patience. "I said there were mentions. But there are no direct records, no actual information. No contract. Someone's wiped the books clean of anything but the most indirect references. And since demons are primarily a self-serving lot, it stands to reason that it was the same someone that was in those wiped records.""Doesn't sound like you keep such good records.""Hell keeps excellent records, you imbecile. What kind of business would we be running, if a contract could just get bloody lost?" Crowley scowls. "I don't know when this was done, but I don't intend to let it slide. And I'll be making some overhauls to our security, once I beat the hordes back into submission.""Okay, so you'll help? She wants me and Sam to meet her, which could be our shot to rescue Cas." Dean thinks a moment, then adds for good measure, "Based on our phone conversation, she definitely knows you and is definitely not toeing the party line.""Well, I suspect the dislike will be mutual, once we meet," says Crowley drily. "So far she doesn't sound like my type." He eyes Dean with disdain. "So you and Moose are going to plunge headlong into a trap to save Cas, eh? Do you have any form of a plan or are you just counting on the sheer dumb luck that's kept you alive for the past decade?""We're working on it," Dean says, irritated. "Have you figured out anything about those symbols?"Crowley rolls his eyes. "Once again, here I am, doing all the leg work. If your dear mum knew how much effort I've expended into keeping you boys alive she wouldn't be giving me the evil eye every second.""She doesn't like demons," says Dean."Right, right, I know all about her disastrous little foray into the bargaining world. Well, trust is a precious thing and I certainly don't need hers." He pulls a small fabric pouch out of his pocket. "Alright, so about your nonexistent plan. How's your Arabic pronunciation?"
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Mary remembers reading old science fiction stories when she was a girl, picturing the future as a shiny miasma of chrome spaceships and automated landscapes. In her imagination, the world of the future would be a place of unexpected glory and adventure, and yet it would still be her world.This, though, this world is new and unfamiliar in every place that she thought it would still be recognizable, and yet it's still dangerous and ugly in the same old ways. And she's been dropped into it with no warning, no explanation, no armor to protect her against the weight of the years she'd missed. John—is dead. It's a fact that hits her hard every time she thinks of it, which is often; he was alive only last week, after all, at least in her memory.And her boys, her two beautiful boys, unspooled thin and frayed into adulthood like starved candle flames before they'd had time to grow, stretched out into these two strangers, these hunters—dangerous, hungry, kind, lonely, ruthless, raw, selfless, brave, loyal, oblivious. She watches the motel room door swing shut behind her eldest son and feels a soft ache of helplessness, remembering the agony that had flared in Dean's eyes when Castiel's voice issued from the small phone, the near-panic she'd sensed brewing beneath the surface throughout the course of their just-ended argument.Sam is looking at her apologetically."A whole week back from the dead and you boys still won't let me sit at the grownups table." She says it wryly, but she can feel a spark of resentment burning behind the words. She may be barely returned from death, but she's not a child, not something fragile to be protected. Thirty years, apparently, have passed without her, thirty years in which she never did a damn ounce of her duty to her children, and now that she has the opportunity to make up for lost time it's those same children who are telling her no. It's ironic and infuriating at the same time."It's not like that.""Sure it is." Mary sits on the edge of the table. "You think I'm dead weight." She hates how it sounds, the accusation—whiny, petulant. Childish."Mom, we met you when you were a teenager and you were a badass even back then. Trust me, we don't think you're dead weight." Sam crosses his arms. "Dean...he's already on edge, with Cas in danger. This will go better if he's not worrying about you too. And he will worry, if you're there. Doesn't matter how good you are, he'll worry. Same as he worries about Cas, same as he worries about me. And he's used to us being there.""I can handle myself, Sam.""We know. Just give it time. Dean's...protective." Sam makes a wry face. "Overprotective.""Ever since he was a kid," Mary says, the fondness in her voice taking her by surprise. It's true, though—the tense watchfulness that shapes Dean's every move is an extension of how he'd been as a four-year-old, but it's heavy now, almost feral, a duty twisted and swollen by the way he'd grown up.Our kids, John, she thinks. What the fuck did you do to our kids?She looks at Sam, who is watching her with a kind of breathless, disbelieving wonder. She's been catching the look on his face often, when he thinks she isn't paying attention. It makes her feel odd, the reverence of the look, as if she's usurped the place of some formless deity, something hallowed. She isn't sure the look is rightfully hers to claim, or if it belongs to some other Mary, someone who exists only as an ideal. She isn't sure if she can measure up to that look.Sam's gaze flickers down, hiding the expression, and Mary pretends not to have noticed. "And you?" she asks instead. "You think I should stay behind?""Set doesn't know about you," Sam allows."Which is an advantage you could use.""That might be tipping our hand too soon, though. Dean's right, if we get hung up with something, if this meeting or whatever it is doesn't go well, you're our best shot to rescue Cas.""That's flimsy, Sam."He shrugs. "Yeah, alright. Okay, cards on the table, mom? This is dangerous. I can feel it. Set's got the upper hand with this one. Unless we can find something out in three hours, we're walking in almost blind, and we don't know who she is or what she's capable of.""All the more reason to—""Mom, we might not save Cas." He looks her in the eye, and Mary sees that Sam has accepted the reality that Dean still won't acknowledge, the outcome that Dean hasn't yet admitted is a possibility. Ah, she thinks. So Sam is the one. The one who faces the hard truths, the risk of loss."We might lose Cas," Sam repeats, "and that—that'll fuck us up enough, without—I don't want to lose you, just when I've met you."Mary feels something warm unfurl in her heart. "That goes both ways," she points out, though it's a half-hearted protest.Sam's mouth quirks. "I know. They're all crappy arguments. Why'd you agree?"She'd agreed because of the anguish that had been in Dean's eyes, the catch in his voice as when he said Cas's name. Though the phrasing isn't entirely accurate. She'd yielded to his desperation, but she hadn't agreed. "This is your world, Sam. Yours and Dean's, and I trust your judgment." She smiles ruefully, folding down her frustration, holding it for later with the grace of long practice; it's something she's done many times, with many stubborn family members, before Sam and Dean were even in the picture. "I might be your parent, but I'm the newcomer, here.""You're doing fine," Sam tells her. "I'm sorry you came back to all this—I'm sorry circumstances weren't more, I don't know, peaceful."He looks suddenly so, so tired. Mary thinks of the stories Dean had told her, on the car ride to Kansas, her first night back in the world, and how it hadn't sounded like things had ever been peaceful for her sons. "I didn't want this life for you and Dean."Sam smiles, a sad smile that breaks her heart in all kinds of ways. "It kind of found us anyway.""If I'd been there," says Mary, because she knows that what blame there is doesn't rest entirely on John's shoulders, "if I hadn't made that deal—""You can't think that way. And we've helped a lot of people, through hunting."Mary chooses not to point out that they seem to have also nearly ended the world a couple times. She sighs and looks down at her clasped hands. "I know you have. But it's hard seeing the two of you so—" Harried, she thinks. So close to the abyss. "—worn out," she says instead. And yet strong in ways I never imagined, she adds silently. "And I don't know how to—" She breaks off, shakes her head."We're not looking for you to just magically fix everything," says Sam. "God, Mom, it's enough that you're just—here, you know?" That look of wonder is back on his face, ghosting across his features momentarily as he glances shyly at her and then away again."It's just—odd. Being...back." She searches for words to describe the sense of displacement that trails her everywhere. "Before, I was a hunter, and when I married your father all I knew was that I didn't want to be a hunter. For a while all I wanted to be was your mother. I guess I thought the two things were mutually exclusive. Family and hunting. But you and Dean—" She lifts her hands."I guess we manage it," Sam allows doubtfully."You do." Mary tries to put all the conviction she's felt over the past week into those two words. "And now I'm here, and I have kids, and they're hunters. And—I don't know which to aim for. I always knew what I did and didn't want to be, and now I don't. I don't know what I am." Both mother and hunter, she thinks, and yet not really either. A hunter who stays behind, a mother whose sons are strangers.Sam smiles again, a real smile this time, sweet and gentle and full of charm and light. It reminds her of John, in the early days. "You're Mary Winchester.""I'm not sure I know who that is," Mary mutters, again. Not in this time and place, not in this—brave new world."Welcome to the club," Sam tells her. "Trust me, Dean and I, we've got no idea how to define ourselves outside of hunting, either. We're—working on it."Mary raises an eyebrow, thinks of Dean and Castiel, the heavy depth of things unspoken that had weighed down their reunion in the dark bunker, how they'd clutched unconsciously at each other, like drowning sailors. The awkward, pained way they'd circled each other after, in the days leading up to Castiel's departure from the motel in Nebraska. "No, you're not.""Alright, maybe not right now. But we're not always running for our lives. Or fighting off an apocalypse."She decides that Sam, whose bright, clever gaze flits from truth to truth and seems to miss nothing, has probably noticed what she's noticed. "So Dean and Castiel, are they always so...""Blockheaded?" says Sam dryly."I was going to say tense."Sam shrugs. "I would say they're figuring stuff out, but they've been figuring stuff out for years and aren't any less in the dark than when they started. So.""I suppose Castiel was just possessed by Lucifer," Mary points out, faltering a little on the last word. She still has a hard time wrapping her brain around that one. "That's probably difficult to just...move past.""Yeah," says Sam. "But it's always something, with them. Maybe saving Cas from four days of torture will finally get Dean's head out of his, um, his butt."His reticence is endearing, but before she can muster a chuckle, the door of the motel room opens and Dean strides back in, trailed by Crowley."We've got a plan," Dean announces breathlessly.Mary eyes Crowley with distaste. You'll work with a demon but not with me? She doesn't say it, though. This world is different than the one she left, and she's already gotten the impression that Dean and Sam's alliances are fluid, defined more by the situation and the current enemy than by such comparatively inflexible labels as good guys and bad guys."Crowley will tail us to the meet-up," Dean says. "That's an element Set won't be expecting, it'll give us an edge.""So I'm the only one who has to hang back," says Mary in disgust."Obviously," says Crowley. He lifts his eyebrows. "No need to be jealous, dear. Your sons don't give a damn if I live or die."Dean and Sam shrug their agreement."So Crowley comes in with us, what then?" says Sam. "We still don't know how she's keeping Cas prisoner.""We do know," says Crowley. "The symbols in your photograph. It's a binding collar, an ancient one. There aren't supposed to be any left in existence—well, technically I think I have a one tucked away somewhere, which is how I know what we're dealing with, and I suppose this other one makes two. They were used by the priests of that sect I told you about.""Used for what?""To bind, Moose. Slaves, sacrifices, the occasional unruly crocodile. Get the picture?""And that's holding Cas?" Sam sounds skeptical."These priests didn't fool around with half measures," says Crowley. "The symbols will have trapped his grace. He'll be one tick up from mortal, easy enough for Set to handle."Mary thinks of Castiel. He hadn't seemed particularly angelic, not as she'd always pictured angels, but there'd still been, underneath his tired eyes and stooped shoulders, a hint of something regal, a hidden reservoir of grace and power and light. She doesn't like the idea of it caged by some sort of slaver's magic. She catches Dean's eye and she can see that he doesn't like it either, although that, she thinks, surveying the muted fury in her son's eyes, is bit of an understatement.Crowley drops two objects on the table. A small smoke-grey crystal and a sheet of parchment."In the spirit of family team-ups all around, I contacted my dear mother and asked her for a favor," he says acidly, "which, if you had any doubts as to my commitment, ought to convince you that I am invested in the success of your rescue mission."Mary picks up the parchment. The top half is covered in symbols she doesn't recognize, the bottom with what she guesses is the phonetic pronunciation. "What language is this?""A little of Arabic, a little Sumerian. A little Polish too, actually. It was a bit of a custom job." Crowley taps the crystal with a manicured fingernail. "Say the incantation, break the crystal, it should dispel the enchantment on the collar. Then we scoop up your angel and take care of this demon who has the gall to think she can go off the grid on me.""Why can't we just do the spell now, here?" says Mary."The spell is area-based, love. You'll need to be relatively near Castiel to use it.""Anyway, Cas isn't going to be in much of a fighting state," says Dean. "There's no point in breaking the binding if Set's still got him. But if she thinks she can control him, her attention won't be focused on him.""Can't have that," says Crowley sarcastically. He rolls his eyes at Mary, who glares back. She's impressed with Crowley's offering—they have much more of a shot than they did before—but he's still a demon, and she's yet to see proof of his trustworthiness."I don't know, Dean," says Sam quietly. "It's risky. We don't know what this meeting is going to be like. We still really don't have any idea what we're walking into."Dean looks at Sam, his eyes dark. "Sam, it's Cas.""I know," says Sam. Mary is somewhat taken aback by his tone of agreement, because as far as shoddy arguments go "it's Cas" is up there. But she's learning that for Dean and Sam, missions and motivations exist and operate at varying depths, not all of them obvious to outsiders, not all of them entirely logical. Her sons, she thinks, for all their experience and strategy, all their expertise and hard-earned wisdom, are still creatures of the heart, still driven by the kind of love and loyalty that breeds inherent recklessness."We take care of Set," Dean is saying. "Then we bust Cas out. Simple." He flashes a hard, diamond-bright grin, and somehow that reminds her of John too, though it's vastly different from the slow warmth of Sam's smile earlier.Sam picks up the crystal. He nods slowly, his eyes flickering towards Mary and then back to Dean. "Okay," he says slowly. "Yeah, okay. Let's do it."***Dean is praying to him again. Castiel can't hear the words through the relentless, corroding vise-grip of the collar's magic, but he knows the feel and color of Dean's voice, recognizes the questing reach of Dean's thoughts even as the prayer dissipates against the spells binding his grace.He lifts his head from where he's lying curled on the cold cement floor, wishing again that he could answer. Even this slight motion sends pain surging through his upper body. His chest, arms, and back are blanketed in bloody cuts, and in some places patches of skin are entirely gone, leaving only the raw red tissue beneath. What little skin is untouched by direct blows is bruised and inflamed, or swollen and glossy from contact burns—Set had begun favoring judicious application of heated metal implements, during the last few sessions.He isn't sure how long it's been since she took him. The building's single unblocked window, darkening and lightening with the movement of the sun, ought to have been sufficient for him to count the days, but he's spent too much time passing into and out of consciousness to trust his memory, or his perception of the passage of time. The collar's foul magic, eating away at his grace, is a slow, poisonous pulse that clouds and corrodes his mind, so that he would have had difficulty thinking straight even if not for the more physical forms of torture.Set had begun with the knife tip—long shallow meandering cuts from collarbone to hip, crisscrossing each other over his torso. He'd told himself that it wasn't as bad as when Efram and Jonah tortured him; they'd sunk the angel blades deep into his flesh, wrenched them out carelessly, to the accompaniment of bright bursts of his grace. And it hadn't been as bad, at first, but there had been so many cuts and his grace, pinioned, could do nothing to heal him. It had only kept him alive long past when an ordinary mortal would have bled out, but the wounds had not closed and the sharp immediacy of the pain felt as piercing and proximate as when he'd been human. He'd cracked when she turned the knife to slide the blade in sideways—begged without dignity when the pain became unbearable, screamed for her to stop as she pared off narrow strips of his skin, passed out more than once only to be slapped back to wakefulness and the hot jagged bite of the blade.His wrists had been tied over his head then, and later she'd secured his arms around a pillar, so that she could access his back unhindered. Now, however, his hands are bound behind him by several loops of razor wire; he can feel the sharp edges of the crimped steel barbs biting into his wrists, and his fingers are sticky with the blood that has been trickling in rivulets down the grooves in his palms. Surreptitiously, he wiggles one foot; though another coil of the wire has been wrapped around his ankles, it's a little looser and he thinks that perhaps if he can get his shoe off he might be able to draw his foot free with minimal injury. He shifts to pull his legs underneath him, wincing as the movement jostles his bruised rib and other injuries. He's still naked from the waist up, Set having carelessly ripped his shirt off at the start of the torture, and the brush of the filthy concrete against his open wounds is agony. If he thought he would live long enough for it to matter, he might worry that the suppression of his grace is leaving him open to infection. As it is, he focuses on fighting down the nausea that churns in his gut as he tries to shift positions.Footsteps sound out as Set emerges from the gloom and approaches him. The demon has left the warehouse infrequently, and most times when Castiel awakes from his last slip into unconsciousness, it is to the cool, pitiless gaze of her almond-shaped eyes. Today is unusual; he hasn't seen her since the morning, when she stood in front of him and called the Winchesters. The memory makes his throat feel tight with worry; he is glad Sam and Dean are alright, but he fears that they may acquiesce to Set's demands and show up for the proposed meeting unarmed and alone, effectively offering themselves up to the trap. He had tried to warn them, but hadn't succeeded in getting the words out before Set had silenced him."What do you want now?" He throws as much derision into his tone as he can manage.Set clicks her tongue thoughtfully. "I was considering asking you some other Winchester trivia. But I think you might be at the point of giving in immediately and simply telling me, and that would ruin the point.""Is that not...what you wanted, from the beginning?" Castiel remembers her question—what is Dean Winchester's favorite color?—remembers staring close-mouthed at her, refusing to answer, nonplussed but wary all the same. Remembers the cold smile which had graced her features as she reached down to wrap slim fingers around his throat."Not at all," says Set. "I appreciate your stubbornness, your...resolve, however misplaced it may be. It has helped to pass the time." Her eyes rove over his body, the oozing cuts and mottled bruises. So far, she has only dealt harm to his upper body, layering injuries over his torso and shoulders but leaving everything below the belt untouched. Castiel isn't sure whether he's grateful for this, or whether he wishes the pain was more spread out."You're a mess," Set says idly. "Look at yourself."Castiel glances down, taking in the sight of his mangled chest, the white gleam where part of a rib is exposed. It's true, he supposes—he certainly looks like he ought to be dead, and messy is a good word to describe the shredded muscle tissue and frayed skin left in the wake of Set's ministrations.Set crouches in front of him, forearms braced against her thighs. For once, she is unarmed—no knife, no pliers, no needles to slide under his skin. She reaches out to cup his jaw in one hand, forcing Castiel to meet her eyes."I'm thinking of keeping you," she muses. "Your resilience is...entertaining. It'd be interesting to have an angel, when I take the throne." She lets go of his jaw and brushes her fingers lightly across the open wounds on his chest. "All the regenerative power of a damned soul, but...the solidity of your vessel, the realness of your flesh, makes it far more satisfying."Castiel spits out yet another gob of blood. "I thought you were a traditionalist," he mutters. He's managed to pull the his left foot slightly out of its shoe, the heel pressed against looped razor wire. He can feel the tiny blades digging into his skin through the fabric of his pants. He knows, though he is careful not to look, that his angel blade is sitting on a table near the wall, a distance of a mere twenty feet. If he can incapacitate Set and give himself time to reach it..."It's true, keeping an angel in Hell is not generally done," Set acknowledges. "But why not? It will only increase my standing with the hordes. And as far as Heaven goes...well, I hardly think they will care what happens to you."Castiel grits his teeth. He knows her words are true—most if not all of Heaven would consider Hell the place where he belongs anyway. And maybe it is where I should end up, he thinks, working his foot free with infinitesimal care, but not yet. "In fact," says Set thoughtfully, "once the Winchesters are dead, there won't be anybody who—"Castiel lunges, pushing off the ground with one leg. He barrels into Set, who to her credit lets out only a sharp gasp of surprise as he crashes into her and wraps his other leg around her waist. His weight knocks Set backwards; she lands hard on the cement, clutching at Castiel's upper arms as he comes down on top of her. His hands are still tied, so he uses his teeth instead, sinking them into the side of the demon's neck until he can taste the foul tang of her blood.She screams, the first such sound he's heard from her, and he takes a fierce pleasure in the noise, in exacting from her what she's wrung from him so many times. It's tempting to just hold on and bite deeper, but he knows he can't kill her this way and so he yanks free of her grip and staggers to his feet. He can see his blade now, lying on the table next to the metal whip, gleaming a little in the faint light from the window. But he's misjudged his own abilities, the toll his injuries have taken on him. Whether it's due to blood loss or fatigue or shock or the collar or some combination of all of these, standing sends a wave of lightheadedness crashing over him. He barely makes it a few steps before the room spins around him, a dizzying whirl of shadows.No. He fights to stay upright, trying to focus, hating himself for the weakness. He needs to destroy Set, before the Winchesters arrive. Dean, Sam. Castiel takes another step, and then a hand grabs the back of his hair and he is thrown viciously back onto the ground. Pain from a dozen different sources renders him breathless; he gasps for air, palms flat against the floor."You cockroach!" Set stands over him, livid, her hair in disarray. Her eyes have gone jet black; blood streaks the side of her neck, staining the collar of her white jacket. "I'll kill you. You dare—"She lifts one leg and slams her foot down, hard, on his right knee. Castiel hears the crack of his kneecap shattering under the inhuman—literally inhuman—force of the blow, and he screams, his vision going cloudy and bright for an instant. The fresh onslaught of agony overwhelms him; it's too much, he wasn't designed for this, he can't. He rolls over and retches.Set stoops to catch him by the throat and all but throws him toward the nearest support pillar. His leg shifts as he lands; the splintered joint is jostled and he barely recognizes the raw sound that tears from his own throat. "You think to harm me? You?" She stalks forward. "I've been alive for thousands of years, angel! I've gone unseen for millennia!""Pity," Castiel croaks, trying to see straight. "All that work for nothing.""I was revered even before I was a demon. My power has only grown since then." She slaps him, though he barely registers the blow."I'll kill you. You can die with your precious Winchesters. " She presses one hand to her neck as the bite mark begins to seal up, her eyes reverting to normal, though they remain dark with rage. "I'll take pleasure in your death."Castiel tries to sit up, accidentally moves his right leg, and promptly throws up again, another thin stream of bile, all that his empty stomach—he doesn't eat or drink, after all—can muster up."You can't even stand," Set sneers. "And you would keep me from the throne? I have—" She breaks off, bites down on the rest of the sentence and gives him one more venomous look before turning away.She's been careless, Castiel thinks, watching her storm toward the table and the array of tools he's become all too familiar with over the past several days. Her vitriolic outburst is more information than he's gotten from her throughout all of that time. Pain makes her reckless. He files the information away. It feels pointless, trying to strategize when he knows he's too weak to be of use in a battle right now, when he's just discovered he can barely stand, let alone fight. It's better, though, than apathy, better than simply giving in and waiting to die—he's been down that road before, and it's not a lure that he wants to succumb to again. He leans against the pillar and closes his eyes, gathering himself.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
"Dude, how'd we miss this place?" Dean looks, askance, at the large rundown building visible around the curve of the road. "We checked for shit like this. This is, like, classic hostage situation setting.""I don't know," says Sam honestly. "Nobody knew about it, it didn't show up on any searches.""There's no way people didn't know about this," says Dean, as they pull up in the small, trash-littered parking lot at the front. "It's huge.""Yeah." Sam tries to fight down his rising sense of unease. "Something else is going on here.""Well, we don't have a choice." Dean puts the Impala into park and they sit for a minute, surveying the dusty door of the building and the two burly men leaning against it.They'd spent the past three hours scouring the surrounding area without any luck. The address they'd received fifteen minutes ago, in a text from Cas's number, had led them to what looked like an abandoned factory or warehouse of some sort. A building which somehow none of the townspeople they'd spoken to seems to have thought worth mentioning."So...demons?" Sam nods toward the men who are now standing up, eyeing the Impala."Probably...which is weird, she seemed like the type to work alone.""Yeah," says Sam again. "But we really don't know anything about her, do we? I mean, not for sure. It's all guesswork.""Guesswork is a hunter's bread and butter, Sammy."Sam makes a face. It's alright for Dean, who has a hunter's instincts through and through, to talk about guesswork, but Sam prefers to know things. His hunches have all tended to be disastrous. He watches as one of the demons leans over and pulls open the building's door, making a mocking gesture of exaggerated welcome."Great," says Dean. "A greeting party." He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "Think we can just kill them now?""Crowley can handle the demons." The plan was for Crowley to follow on their heels and wait outside the building for their signal, or at least for an opportune time to intervene. "We don't want to risk pissing Set off at this point, it's better to just stick to the plan."Dean exhales. "Right, I know. I'm just antsy.""It's going to work." Sam tries to imbue his words with a confidence he doesn't feel. He touches the crystal, a small lump in his jacket pocket. "Got the spell?" He'd watched Dean slide it into the back pocket of his jeans, but the systematic check is soothing. It's going to work. He's been repeating the phrase to himself for the past three hours and fifteen minutes. It's going to work. He tries not to think about all the times it hasn't worked."Yep." Dean exhales again. "Let's do this."They disembark, leaving their guns in the car. The two demons watch them approach but make no move otherwise."You guys do valet parking, too?" Dean drawls as they get within speaking range."Yeah, don't worry about your car," says the demon who'd opened the door, smirking. The other one spits languidly at the ground."We're here to see your boss," Sam says sharply. He's never been able to do what Dean does—maintain the smile, the flippant, devil-may-care attitude in the face of danger.The first demon stabs his thumb over his shoulder. "Door's right there, sweetheart. No toys allowed inside, though.""Didn't bring any." Dean spreads his hands, then opens his empty jacket. Sam copies him, resisting the urge to look down at his boot, inside which the demon-killing knife is tucked.The inside of the building is dim, and when one of the demons pulls the door shut, the only light source is a single dusty window set high up on one of the walls. Sam trails Dean as they slowly make their way around the untidy stacks of pallets and tarp-covered machinery that surround the doorway. The narrow aisle quickly opens up into a much larger space, slightly better lit now that the window is nearer and its light unblocked by the clutter. The unwanted factory accoutrements have been moved closer to the walls, leaving just the bare cement floor interspersed with narrow steel support beams, rising from the floor to the dusty ceiling far above."Winchesters."The voice is Set's, the speaker a slim Asian woman standing near one of the beams. Slumped in front of her, one leg extended at an odd angle, the other folded under him, angel blade to his throat, is—"Cas," Sam exclaims, and hears the word leave Dean's throat at the same time. They start forward, hands going automatically to belts that no longer hold guns."Be still," says Set sharply, pulling back. She has one hand in Cas's hair while the other presses the blade warningly against his neck, just below his jaw, in the thin margin left bare by the heavy leather collar. The binding collar. Sam resists the urge to reach for his pocket again, to feel the small, reassuring weight of the crystal. Cas has been gagged with a strip of white cloth; it looks like his hands are tied behind his back. His eyes are open and unblinking, fixed urgently on them, though at the same time the angel looks—dazed, almost, and he's swaying slightly in Set's grip.Dean is still edging forward despite Set's warning, his hands lifted at a placating angle. Sam keeps pace, though he wishes Dean would remain still for once, rather than risk angering Set. There's still perhaps twenty feet separating them from their friend and his captor. He squints at Cas, whose coat and shirt seemed to have been replaced by some sort of dark red—paint? another shirt?Dean pulls up short with a sound so soft it's almost the absence of sound that Sam hears—the vacuum where Dean's next breath has gotten lodged in his throat. It's followed by a long, furious string of muttered curses.Sam shoots a confused glance at his brother's back, and then he looks back at Cas and his brain puts two and two together, and he has to brace one hand on his knee to keep from doubling over in horror, because that's not a shirt. That's Cas's chest. Except it barely looks like part of a person, anymore—just a raw red expanse, the skin almost entirely gone in places, so that there are long tracts of exposed bloody tissue stretching from collarbone to navel, as if he's been flayed alive by some careless inquisitor.Sam presses his other hand against his mouth, his gorge rising. The last time the sight of blood had affected him this badly, it was Charlie's corpse in a bathtub—and this is so much more blood. Cas shouldn't be alive—there's no way anyone should be able to survive that.He remembers Crowley's words. He'll be one tick up from mortal. There must be enough unfettered grace left in Cas to keep him alive, then. Sam meets Cas's agonized gaze and guesses there's not enough to block the pain.Next to him, Dean makes another soft, urgent sound, and sways almost imperceptibly forward. Sam can see the tension in his brother's stance, as if Dean is on the brink of abandoning the plan and charging at Set and her prisoner. Sam feels rather like doing the same thing, himself; the wariness and caution he'd walked in with are beginning to sink beneath the weight of a cold, shaking fury. He wants to kill Set. He wants to drive her to her knees before Cas and cut out her heart while the angel watches. He wants her to forfeit her life, for this."Let's begin," says Set. She cuffs Cas gently on the temple; the angel's head turns to the side without resistance. "This one keeps passing out on me.""You're going to pay," says Dean. The words come out a little breathless, as if spoken involuntarily, but his voice is as gentle as silk.Set cocks her head and surveys him, her dark eyes sparkling in the light. "Take off your jackets and shoes. Leave your phones on the floor, too."When they hesitate, she adds, "Now," and presses the tip of the angel blade into Cas's skin until the angel winces visibly."Alright, alright, leave him alone." Dean holds up his hands in surrender. He glances at Sam as he shrugs out of his jacket. Sam nods and follows suit. He manages to palm the crystal out of the pocket, hiding it in his hand as he pulls off his boots as well, but even so the unease is back, tightening in his throat until he can barely breathe. He's suddenly, brutally aware that their entire plan hinges on Crowley's cooperation."Good," says Set, when they're standing in their socks on the grimy floor. She nods toward the support pillar nearest them. "Cuff yourselves."Sam turns to look and sees that two eyelet rings have been affixed to the metal beam, at about chest height. A pair of shackles dangles from each. He frowns, perplexed. As a demon, Set should be able to hold them in place without the cuffs; it doesn't make sense for her to want them to be physically restrained. Unless perhaps she's uncertain about her ability to hold both of them at once. Or she wants to be able to concentrate on other things. The uneasy feeling fledges its wings and begins to flutter anxiously in his chest.This will work, he tells himself. It's okay. This will work. But he can't help exchanging a worried look at Dean. Crowley had better be ready. The demon is supposed to have given them only a few minutes' head start, so he should be in the building now, waiting for an opportunity to strike. Not that they can risk anything at the moment, not as long as Set is in a position to drain the life out of Cas with a flick of her wrist.Cas makes a low, distressed sound as Sam and Dean move towards the pillar, and shakes his head at them. In response, Set wrenches his hair back until his chin points nearly to the ceiling. Sam has to look away from the irregular heaving of Cas's peeled chest. "Hurry up, or I will slit his throat here and now."Sam shoots another helpless glance at Dean, who gives the tiniest of shrugs back. Dean's eyes are burning with impotent rage, but the message in the shrug is clear: they don't have any other options.The shackles are cold and smooth to the touch. They rotate enough for Sam to fasten them around his own wrists, but as he clicks them shut he can see that he'll need a key to get them open again. That, or the King of Hell. He tugs on the cuffs experimentally, but the eyelet ring seems solidly attached to the beam, either built into it by design or painstakingly welded on afterwards.Set visibly relaxes once the cuffs are closed around both Sam's and Dean's wrists. "Good." She smiles and releases Castiel, who immediately slumps over to one side with a muffled gasp. Dean makes a noise that sounds remarkably like a snarl. "We're ready to begin."All traces of humor have gone from Dean's voice and demeanor, and his spine is coiled-steel-rigid as he reiterates, "I said you'd pay, and you will."Set raises her eyebrows. Her white jacket is stained rust-red on one side of the collar. "You may not approve of my methods, Dean Winchester, but I don't place much stock in your threats, given your current position." She steps around Cas and moves gracefully toward them."You'd be surprised," Sam speaks levelly, but he's making the banter automatically, speaking only to buy time. His heart leaps as Set turns her back to Cas in order to approach them; granted, Cas looks like he can hardly stand, but the demon is no longer holding him at knifepoint, which is a sufficient safety margin for Crowley to intervene.But there's no sign of the erstwhile King of Hell, no acidic quip heralding his arrival, and Sam watches as Set draws a gun from the waist of her jeans, tossing the angel blade to one side. The sword clangs to the ground, rolling away toward the shadowed edges of the room, and Sam's eyes flick toward Cas. But the angel, though his eyes have followed the path of the blade, makes no move to stand. Sam watches him struggle back into a sitting position, one leg folded under him, the other still bent at a grotesque angle. Something's wrong with his leg. That in addition to the fact that judging from the Cas's glassy eyes, it's taking everything he has to stay conscious, period, and Sam suspects that the angel isn't going to be able to fight much.Set stops only a few feet away, still well out of their reach. Her face is thoughtful as she muses, "I devote a lot of effort to not being surprised, Sam Winchester."Sam yanks at the cuffs again, pointless though he knows the effort is. "So do we," he says, still playing for time."Oh?" Set tilts her head.Sam throws an uneasy glance at Dean, who is standing not quite on the other side of the pillar, holding his shackled arms to one side so that he can face Set. His brother grins, though it looks more like a baring of teeth than a smile. "Yeah, this isn't our first time, sweetheart.""I don't doubt that." The demon lifts the weapon smoothly and aims it at Dean. "But I intend it to be your last."That's enough for Sam. "Crowley!" he shouts, throwing caution to the winds. He hates giving away the element of surprise, but the demon has delayed too long already. "Now would be a really good time!"The pause that follows, marked by a notable absence of Crowley, would be almost comical if the situation were different. Sam can feel his heartbeat speeding up, feel adrenaline flooding him as their plan begins to wobble on its shaky foundations. The smile hasn't faded from Dean's face, but it's gone brittle and automatic, and his expression is taut, fighting down alarm.Set lowers the gun. "Crowley?" she says, and Sam's mouth goes dry at the amusement in her tone. "You thought to work with Crowley?""Why?" Dean challenges. "Hoping to get him on your side?"She laughs, a cruel, pleased sound. "He won't be coming, Winchesters. I'm afraid you're on your own."He betrayed us, Sam thinks in growing horror. And then, a small, grim part of him: of course he betrayed us. What did you think was going to happen? The flimsiness of their plan, the sheer stupidity of trusting Crowley, of all people, with their lives, with Cas's life, comes crashing down on him.Cas is staring at them with a panicked expression. Sam tries to fight off the clawed grip of a similar sense of panic. We don't have a plan B, he thinks, appalled. We barely had a plan A. This had been touch-and-go from the beginning, a gamble necessitated by their tight time window and the fact that Set has seemed to be ahead of them every step of the way.And now their reckless, scraped-together attempt has failed, and fuck, Set has the upper hand in every way imaginable.Thank God we didn't bring Mom. Sam tugs for a third time on the cuffs and tries to straighten his thoughts into a manageable form, tries to ignore and simultaneously believe the frantic chant of it'll be fine inside his head.Set punctuates the gravity of their situation by shooting Dean.****They are so fucked.That's the thought running nonstop through Dean's head right before Set shoots him in the leg."Dean!" Sam's startled shout is loud in his ear, close on the heels of the gunshot's echoing crack. Beneath it he can hear a muffled cry from Cas, as the angel jerks halfway up from the floor, leaning forward as if desperately trying to get to his feet. Dean goes down with a grunt of pain, arms stretched above his head as he drops to one knee so he can take the weight off the injured leg. Which feels like it's on fire, the bullet wound sending spiking flares of agony through him as his own uneven breathing jostles the limb. All he can think is, thank fuck it wasn't Sam. His little brother has taken more than his fair share of bullets over the past few months.Set lowers the gun."Dean, are you alright?" Sam is twisted around the pillar, staring down at him in dismay."I'm fine," Dean grunts. He locks the pain down, contains it, forces his mind to stay clear.Sam whips his head back up to face Set, who is carelessly chucking the gun in the direction of the angel blade. The clatter as it hits the cement is loud and echoing in the wide space."Only one bullet," she explains. "I wasn't planning to kill you with it, I only thought perhaps it would take a little more to incapacitate you than scratching your pet." Dean fights back a snarl, galled by the careless way her eyes flicker to Cas, as well as by her choice of words—she's done far more than scratch Cas, after all, and it's infuriating that she would consider him a pet.He pulls ineffectually at his shackled wrists. He wants nothing more than to slit Set's throat with the knife he can see peeking out of Sam's boot, and then rip that fucking slave collar off Cas's neck. It's almost odd; Cas is slumped beaten and bloody before him, his upper body practically skinned, the injuries speaking of tortures that are all too easy—too familiar—for Dean to picture, and yet what's bothering Dean the most is the collar. It doesn't make sense, he knows. But the thick leather band forcing Cas's chin up reeks of—of humiliation, degradation, possessiveness. Of ownership. Cas is a fucking angel, a celestial being, not something that should ever be bound in such a way. And the idea of a demon controlling his friend like that, putting her hands on Cas like that, claiming what isn't hers like that—Dean thinks in frustration of the counterspell, folded up in his back pocket, hidden from Set but completely out of reach. It's worse that he knows the collar isn't just a physical limitation; he can see the wounds Cas isn't able to heal, with his grace blocked, see the exhaustion on Cas's face, the way the angel is listing to one side as he struggles to remain sitting upright. He glares at Set. Fuck, he and Sam have been stupid, walking into this."Don't lose resolve, Dean Winchester," Set chides. "Again, I was not trying to kill you, I merely didn't want to waste the bullet.""What do you want?" And okay, Sam's tone is full-on murderous now. Dean wonders if this is what he sounds like when people hurt his brother."I want your corpses," Set snaps, her manner going from flippant to deadly in an instant. "I want Hell, and I'll take it with your deaths." She spins on her heel and heads for the wall and the shadowy objects arranged against it. She tosses her next words over her shoulder, "Word around town is, this time you'll stay dead. And being the one to finally kill the Winchesters, for good? I'll have the undying loyalty of every demon in the Pit."Dean exchanges another look with Sam; his brother's forehead is creased in worry, and Dean has to admit, he's got an unpleasant sinking feeling in his chest, because Set's declaration doesn't seem to leave a lot of room for negotiation or stalling. As for Cas, the angel is wrenching his bound arms, his eyes haunted. He looks terrified, and that does nothing to allay Dean's apprehension, because Cas never looks afraid when he's the only one in danger.No, Cas is afraid for them. And if Cas is afraid for them, then they truly are screwed."There's something to be said for ritual," comes Set's voice, ringing out as the demon walks back towards them. "I believed that even when I was human. In my opinion it's worth going to the extra effort to conduct...endings...properly." Her gait is uneven, weighed down by what she's carrying: a grimy, ancient-looking urn in one hand, and in the other a bright red container that is unmistakably a canister of gasoline. Under one arm is a long wooden rod, one end wrapped in cloth. A torch.Dean's stomach drops straight through his feet somewhere. No. Fuck no.Set lowers the canister and the torch to the floor so that she can lift the urn in both hands. She strides over to Cas and tips the urn. A clear fluid flows out, too sluggish to be water. Holy oil. Dean remembers Michael's howl of pain, remembers the archangel's flesh charring to black cinders. Michael had come back, of course, but Michael was an archangel. And Cas isn't. The oil pools in Cas's hair and runs down his shoulders, trickling over his ruined chest, soaking the fabric of his pants as Set continues to douse him.Cas never even fucking looks at her. His eyes are fixed on Dean and Sam, his shoulders trembling with effort as he struggles to pull his arms free."That should be enough." Set rights the urn and walks over to set it on the ground beside the fuel can. "Don't want to waste it, do I?" Her tone is calm, conversational, as if she's talking about a crafting project.She carefully begins pouring out a thin trail of gasoline from the red container, starting from the edge of the puddle of oil spreading from Cas's shaking form and walking back toward the pillar where Dean and Sam are restrained. Dean watches her, frantically trying to think of some way to escape, but his mind is blank. He turns to look at Sam, hoping his brother has a plan, but on Sam's face he sees only his own desperate fear reflected. Blood is trickling down his brother's wrists from where the shackles are cutting into his skin, and he's still fighting the cuffs, twisting his wrists back and forth while more blood leaks out from the deepening lacerations. Sam's eyes are wild, his movements jerky and instinctual, as if the feral creature that hides at his core is rising to the surface under the threat of imminent death. Dean averts his eyes. He should say something comforting, or encouraging, or at least brash, but he's coming up empty. This is it, he thinks in muted horror. This is it.Set turns and sends gasoline splashing over their feet. The acrid smell of it stings in Dean's nostrils. He hears the click of shifting steel as Sam wrenches at the shackles again. The can is large and made of metal and it has to be even heavier than the urn, but Set raises it effortlessly in one hand and points the silver spout with the other, sloshing the fuel across the two of them. Dean recoils from the foul odor, from the wet lap of the gas hitting his skin. And all he can think is, they're going to die. They're going to die. He's going to have to watch his brother and his best friend die, and it's his fault—for rushing in blindly, for not having a better plan, for trusting fucking Crowley. He'd walked Sam right into a fucking trap. And he'd done it without even pausing to consider the consequences, because it had been Cas. And as if to compound failure upon failure, they aren't even going to save Cas. This demon is going to burn them all, inside this shoddy abandoned building, and the last thing Dean will have done in his shitty lifetime is lose Cas.Set seems to have no compunctions about conserving the gasoline, for she doesn't lower the canister to the floor until the flow of liquid has diminished to a trickle. Looking satisfied, she then backtracks to her original spot and picks up the torch, tucking it under one arm so that she can strike a match and light it. The wrapped head of the torch sputters into life, the flames illuminating the planes and angles of Set's face, the satisfied, anticipatory set of her lips."Wait." It's Sam's voice, hoarse, desperate. "If you need to kill us to take over Hell, fine. But you don't need Cas. Let him go.""Yeah," Dean chimes in, ignoring the muffled sounds of protest emanating from the bound angel at the other end of the room. "You want us to burn? We get it. We're not really on Hell's good side. Kind of a Most Wanted deal. But there's plenty of angels in the, er, sea, you're not going to get more cred for taking one out.""Two Winchesters, right?" Sam leans forward against the cuffs, looking intently at Set. "That's enough. Leave Cas out of it."It's not really a plan, not even a bargain, but Dean knows Sam is thinking along the same lines he is—if they're going to die, at least maybe they can, for once, not drag Cas out with them.Set laughs softly, cupping one hand around the end of the torch, smiling at the flames that are going to end their lives. "You're right, I don't need to kill your Castiel. But I like things to be simple, Winchesters, so no loose ends. And the angel and I have a bit of a history now, don't we? Best to cut things off cleanly." She turns to smile at Cas, who gives her a look that would have shredded her from forehead to toes if looks could work that way."But," Set allows, "I will do you the favor of setting you alight first, so that you won't have to watch him burn. Well, not for as long." She takes a step towards them.The shotgun round catches her in the shoulder, knocking her half around. She cries out and drops the torch—Dean catches his breath, but miraculously the implement, still lit, rolls away from the gasoline trail, rather than towards it.Maybe they're not going to die, not just yet.Set looks up from her defensive half-crouch. Her face, which had been pretty, is twisted into a mask of rage. Smoke rises from the gunshot wound—salt round, Dean thinks. "Who are you?" she hisses. "How did you get in here?"Their mom settles the gun more securely against her shoulder. "I'm Mary fucking Winchester."Holy shit, Dean thinks. He wonders if the awe he's feeling is showing on his face the way it's showing on Sam's.Their mom fires again. Set sidesteps the shot, but lets out an inhuman-sounding snarl as a pellet grazes her arm. She snaps her fingers, and the gun is yanked from their mom's hand by an invisible force. Dean hears the thud of it striking the floor, far off behind a stack of pallets, out of his line of sight. Set takes a few strides forward, hand raised, and Dean watches helplessly as their mom goes flying backwards, slamming hard into one of the nearer pillars."Mom!" Dean shouts, hearing terror seep into his voice. "No!""Your mother?" says Set, eyebrows shooting up. She looks from Dean and Sam back to Mary and a predatory smile tugs at her lips. She turns her hand over, and Mary suddenly chokes and writhes against the pillar, blood blossoming dark and red on her grey t-shirt."MOM!"
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
"Your mother?" says Set, eyebrows shooting up. She looks from Dean and Sam back to Mary and a predatory smile tugs at her lips. She turns her hand over, and Mary suddenly chokes and writhes against the pillar, blood blossoming dark and red on her grey t-shirt.
"Mom!" Sam throws himself toward their mother, the cuffs pulling him up short.Mary lifts her head, gasping. Her eyes are chips of green stone. "El'ardh se'yeks'r," she growls. "Sa'heriki...gigim zul...""You think to exorcise me?" Set laughs wildly and spreads her arms. Her entire left sleeve is stained with blood. "Go ahead, mortal. You may find it more of a challenge than you're accustomed to.""Haraka wa'fataha!" their mom intones, undaunted, though her face is a rictus of pain and the red bloom over her stomach is only growing larger.Over his panic, and the very unpleasant memories that are being dredged to the surface by the sight of his mom being bled out by a demon, Dean thinks, that's not Latin, and he suddenly realizes that the words sound vaguely familiar. He's read those words. Those words are, in fact, at this very moment residing in his unreachable back pocket."J...ji'shai," pants their mom, still pinned against the pillar, straining against the invisible grip of Set's power. "Ji'shai mos..."Set tips her head, her smile widening.A blow lands on the ankle of Dean's injured leg and he smothers a yelp. Sam is urgently kicking him."What?""The crystal, Dean!" Sam's clenched hand is outstretched."I thought that was in your—""No—here, take it!" And Sam, brilliant, level-headed Sam, who clearly inherited their mom's intelligence because Dean certainly doesn't seem to have any of it, is holding the crystal out in his shaking fingers."Why are you giving it to me?" says Dean, nonplussed. "Break it!""I can't," says Sam frantically."What do you mean you can't?" Dean twists back to check on their mom, who is forcing out the last few words of the chant."You see?" Set shrugs her slim, jacketed shoulders. "I have taken certain necessary precautions throughout my life. There are many ways to bind, Mary Winchester. Some more beneficial than others." Her expression hardens, and Mary lets out another thin gasp of pain.Sam kicks Dean again, pulling his attention back. "I can't break it, it's a rock, Dean—"Dean doesn't have time for his brother's weird and inexplicable sensibilities. Their mom doesn't have time. "Drop it and stomp on it, you moron—""We're not wearing shoes, Dean!""Oh—right—" Dean pulls himself slightly up so that he can stretch out his cuffed hands and take the smoke-grey prism from Sam. He drops it on the cement floor and—clumsily, but with all the force he can manage, pain shooting through his leg as he moves it—sweeps his heel into the side of the metal fuel can, toppling it onto the domino-sized crystal.There's a deafening crack, somewhere between the realm of sound and not-sound, that reverberates emptily in his ears. Set blinks, frowning, and turns her head towards them; their mom slumps to the floor, unheeded.And Cas, leg perfectly straight, eyes burning a brilliant blue-white, rises to his feet and yanks his arms free of their bindings.Set whirls and throws out her arms, but she's still only a few yards from her prisoner, and Cas is upon her in a matter of seconds. The angel doesn't bother with blows, simply catching Set around the waist in a clumsy tackle that sends them both crashing to the ground, barely missing the urn of holy oil."Yeah, Cas!" Dean yells encouragingly, his heart leaping as he watches Cas bring his fists down on Set's face and chest. "Kick her ass!" But even from here he can see that Cas's blows are clumsy, erratic. The angel hasn't bothered to remove the gag, but above the strip of cloth his face is set in silent desperation, his bloody chest heaving as he struggles to hold Set down. The demon claws at Cas's stomach with one hand, and then as the angel cries out through the gag, she shoves him sideways and tries to pull free, the two of them a blur of grappling limbs.There's a metallic jangle to Dean's right as Sam again tries to work his hands out of the shackles. "He can't hold her," says Sam frantically. "The collar's weakened him, Dean—""He's got it," says Dean, even though he's aware that the tone of his voice makes the sentence sound more like an entreaty than a statement. You've got it, Cas. He can no longer tell whether he's praying or not.Cas, his legs locked around Set's waist as he fights to pin her, reaches behind him and grabs the urn. He lifts it one-handed, brings his arm around in a sweeping arc—Dean almost cheers again, because weakened or not, Cas has been a warrior for millennia and it shows—and dashes the vessel over Set's head. She shrieks in fury and pain as she's engulfed by a shower of stone shards and oil."Dean, are you alright?" It's their mom, suddenly by his side. There's a trickle of blood running down from the corner of her mouth and half of her shirtfront is soaked red, but she seems to be unaware of it. She's frantically touching his face, her hands feather-light, her eyes shifting quickly to the wound in his leg."Yeah, fine—" Dean's practically forgotten that he was shot. He struggles to his feet, keeping his weight on his good leg, eyes still locked on the desperate battle being waged just a few yards away. "Mom, we have to help Cas, you have to—""I don't have a key," says their mom, fumbling at the handcuffs. "I don't—"The sound of a blow has Dean jerking forward in alarm, as Set catches Cas under the chin, snapping the angel's head back. She lashes out viciously with one hand, nails catching him across the face, and then lands another, heavier blow that sends him sprawling onto his side."Cas!" Dean shouts in alarm. Cas shoots him a quick glance, his eyes huge and dark in his battered face.Set scrambles to her feet. She's drenched in oil, her hair clinging to her neck and shoulders; her face is marred by cuts from the fragments of the broken urn. She looks relatively unharmed, certainly compared to Cas's state, and yet she's breathing hard, as if mortally wounded. She swipes a hand across her face and looks at the blood smeared over her fingers with an expression of mingled disbelief and anger."I'll kill you!" she rages, completely unhinged. "I'll cut you to pieces, angel!" Holy oil drips from her feet and hair as she stumbles back from where Cas, still slumped to one side, is struggling onto one elbow."Castiel!" Their mom abandons her efforts on the handcuffs and takes a step towards Set and Cas, drawing a knife from her belt. Set barely glances at her before lifting her hand, a careless, abortive gesture that flings Mary through the air and sends her crashing down into a tarp-covered piece of machinery, twenty feet away."Fuck!" Dean's curse mingles with Sam's. "Mom!" He cranes his neck anxiously until he sees her stirring feebly on the tarp.Set stretches her other hand out to one side, fingers rigidly bent. Something slender and silver comes spinning toward the air to slap against the demon's outstretched palm. The angel blade."No!" Dean wrenches against his restraints, feeling a stinging pain in both wrists as the metal cuffs slice into him. "Cas! Cas!"He can hear Sam shouting as well, distraught entreaties for Cas to get up, to move. But Cas looks on the verge of passing out, his face bone-white and strained, whatever strength he drew on to fight Set apparently exhausted. He's on his side, propping himself up on one arm, the limb shaking as if it's taking all his strength not to collapse altogether. His injuries look no better, and Dean wonders with a sinking feeling just how effective Rowena's spell was in breaking the collar's magic.Set takes a step back, passing the blade into her left hand and extending the right towards Cas, and Dean frowns, because it has to be a trick of the light, but the look on Cas's face is something like triumph. It has to be a trick of the...the firelight...The fire.Set takes another step back, crooking her fingers as if to beckon Cas towards her, and her foot comes down a hairsbreadth from the end of the dropped torch. A thin tongue of flame licks outward, then jumps almost hesitantly to the oil-soaked hem of her jeans, where it coils like a glowing snake for a moment.Set falters, her head turning, her eyes going to the flame. Her mouth opens a little, a soundless gasp of surprise, and then the fire whirls up her leg and consumes her.Dean hears Sam cry out in shock an instant before the demon's agonized screams fill the building, echoing off the ceiling as Set spins on the spot, a maelstrom of flailing limbs and billowing flame, her head flung back, the fire eating into her skin, her clothes, her hair.And Dean, mouth open, wrists stinging from where he's straining against the cuffs, can only watch in horror as the fire snakes out from Set's whirling, disintegrating body, along the trail of holy oil that links her, a wet, winding trickle of doom, to the trembling, shaking angel still collapsed on the floor.Cas doesn't move, doesn't jerk back in shock, and at that moment Dean knows. Knows why Cas tackled Set to the ground, knows why he broke the holy oil urn over her head, knows why he made no move to resist as she leapt to her feet. Knows that this was planned, calculated, that Cas, angel, strategist, warrior, had weighed the options and outcomes and chosen. This.Dean hears himself shouting again—not a name, anymore, just a long wordless cry. Cas looks up. Cas looks at him. His face is twisted in anguish, his eyes filled with urgent words that Dean is never going to hear, never, because Cas is going to die, Cas is going to burn to death before Dean's eyes, right here in an abandoned warehouse in fucking Colorado.No. Don't. Don't leave me. I fucking need you. The words boil on his tongue, useless, unspoken. Everything he'd never said to Cas, all the feelings he'd tamped down for years, the fragile truth that he'd ignored and hidden and denied until a week ago when it had finally begun to reach small insistent tendrils toward the surface as he prayed, but too late, too goddamn late, he'd never followed up, he hadn't had the courage, and it's all going up in smoke, everything Cas means, everything Dean never fucking said, everything that's never had a chance to be—He locks eyes with Cas (last time), meeting the angel's dark blue gaze with his own stare. He stares because that's all he can fucking do—stare and scream and stand there, pulling and wrenching against the unyielding shackles with everything he has, as the flames quest towards the angel with terrible, inexorable purpose.The moment seems to stretch on, the fire moving more and more slowly, as if this moment, the last moment that Cas will be alive, is caught suspended in time, as if Dean's brain is recoiling from what's about to happen, refusing to process what Dean's about to have to watch.No, it's not just his brain. Dean blinks in confusion. The flames are moving more sluggishly, their progress slowing to a crawl.And in fact, as he watches, the flames drag to a halt altogether, flickering and dancing a mere hand's breadth from Cas, held at bay by some invisible force. Even as Set's corpse collapses to the floor, the fire continuing to rage merrily over her charred form, it comes no closer to Cas.Cas turns his head and stares at the fire blankly. Dean hears Sam's sharp intake of breath—his brother has twisted around, is looking at something behind them.Dean tears his gaze away from the leaping, truncated trail of fire and looks over his shoulder.Crowley snaps the fingers of his upraised hands and extinguishes the flames. "I guess this makes me the cavalry," he snipes.***Castiel keeps his left foot tucked underneath him as Set pours oil down his shoulders, and his broken right leg is stretched out to the side, so no oil lands on that foot either. He doesn't think about this at the time, obviously, as he's expecting to die in a matter of minutes. However, it does mean that when Mary Winchester appears like a miracle and her spell splinters collar's magic and releases his grace, his footprints are clean.So he leaves no tracks of oil as he leaps to his feet and lunges for Set, one spark of his weakly fluttering grace being enough to heal his smashed right knee. He converts the rest into a few minutes of raw power, enough to wrench his arms free of the wire bindings, enough to hold his own against Set's demonic strength. It doesn't last long, of course—his grace might be free, but it's been rotted through by the collar, corroded to the barest flicker, and now he's all but drained it dry, to give him the strength for this last effort, this last chance at redemption.And when Set steps back, careless in her pain and wrath as he'd known she would be, and lands on the still-burning torch, he relaxes, knowing that his footprints were free of oil, that the flames will consume only the two of them, that the fire has no path toward Sam and Dean.He can hear Dean's voice, loud and echoing in the wide space of the warehouse, and he turns his head to look, for one last time. Even wild-eyed and disheveled, Dean is beautiful to behold, a brightness made solid, still radiant with the same light that has awed Castiel from the first moment they met. Dean's eyes are burning with fury and horror, his mouth open in a shout, though if there are words Castiel can't make them out over the thudding of his own pulse, the uneven roaring in his ears. Castiel tries to focus, make the most of this last moment, because it's the last time he's ever going to see Dean. It's the last time he's ever going to see Dean, and something twists inside his heart at that thought.At least the Winchesters are safe; at least Set's corpse is falling to the floor, wreathed in flame, billowing with white smoke, no longer a threat to them. Granted, Castiel is the only reason they were in danger in the first place. He hopes Dean can forgive him for that, for putting Sam in danger, but if not, at least dying means that he won't have to face Dean's anger, his look of betrayed disappointment. And if Castiel's life is the price he'll pay for theirs, if he's to be burnt to cinders here on the floor with the sickly-sweet smell of holy oil in his nostrils, he can accept that. He should be composed for death, then. But it hurts, the knowledge that he'll never see Dean again, never speak with him again, never hear him laugh again, never again dwell in the warm and sunlit presence of his smile, never get the chance to make up for all the many ways he's let Dean down. This—this will have to do. This last action, destroying Set. At least this time, for once, he's taking a foe out of the world, rather than bringing one in.It strikes him that the moment before his death is lasting rather longer than he would have expected, though maybe time distortion is simply a side effect of the bone-deep weakness he's feeling, some additional consequence of his brutalized grace. He doesn't want to tear his eyes away from Dean, doesn't want to face the flames and meet his end head-on (which makes him, he supposes, a coward), but as seconds seem to tick by without the charring embrace of the fire claiming him, he finally turns his head to look.I'm going crazy, he thinks (again, he can't help adding), because surely there's no reason for the fire to have halted like that, so close that he could reach out and touch it. It continues to writhe over Set's blackening body, but the fiery snake that had crept along the trail of oil that links him to her has...stopped. And as Castiel stares at it, confused, fighting off the shadows that tug at the end of his vision (he was a warrior once, after all, and he might be a coward but he wants to die awake, not unconscious like some battle casualty) it goes out altogether. All of it.I'm not dead, Castiel thinks, dazed. It's such a drastic change from what he'd spent the past handful of days assuming would be his fate that he simply sits and stares at the unburned trickle of holy oil that glistens on the floor.I'm not dead.There are hands on his shoulders, spinning him around, and Castiel finds himself looking at Dean again, but much closer now—Dean's on his knees in the oil beside him, his eyes huge and hazel-green in a face that Castiel can't read. He reeks of gasoline and fear; he's beautiful and solid and alive and there."Dean," Castiel tries to say, the word catching on the strip of his own shirt that Set had gagged him with. He still half-expects to feel the hot lick of the flames at any minute.Dean is touching him—lightning-quick, uncertain brushes of his hands on Castiel's face and shoulders and arms, as if Dean doesn't really want the contact, or isn't sure where he can touch Castiel without hurting him. His breath is ragged, shaky to match Castiel's own. "You idiot," he's muttering. "You fucking idiot." The words are harsh and warm at the same time, the tone soft and terrified and relieved and angry all at once. He grips Cas by the shoulders. "How could you...why would you..."Castiel wants to put his hand on Dean's shoulder as well, wants to make sure that Dean really is there in front of him, but he isn't sure he has the strength to lift his arm that high. He touches Dean's kneecap instead, feeling the denim beneath his fingertips, grounding himself in the rough weave of the fabric, the underlying warmth of Dean's body."I'll kick your ass for this," Dean promises, his voice throaty and tender as if speaking to some cherished thing. His eyes are oddly bright in the dimness of the building. "I'll kill you. You fucking lunatic. I should beat the shit out of you. I thought I'd lost—I thought—"He's shaking his head, shaking Castiel slightly by the shoulders, then letting go so that he can cup one hand lightly against Castiel's cheek for a moment. Castiel wants to close his eyes, lean into the touch, but he doesn't know if he's allowed; Dean's words are confusing, their meaning at odds with the naked affection in his voice, and Castiel doesn't know how to interpret this juxtaposition of opposites.Dean pulls the gag out of Castiel's mouth. "I'm sorry," Castiel says as soon as it's gone. He can barely hear his own voice, a tiny, ragged whisper. "I'm sorry.""Don't you fucking apologize." Dean's hands flutter over Castiel's shoulders again, and Castiel wants to tell Dean not to worry about hurting him, wants to tell him that the pain is an old acquaintance, now, and that he'll take more of it in exchange for the solidity of Dean's touch, the presence of it, the reassurance that Castiel is alive. "I'm sorry," Castiel says again, disregarding the directive. It's clear that Dean's angry, underneath the surface layer of relief, and that makes sense; Castiel was stupid, got himself captured, put everyone in danger, allowed Set to trap the Winchesters, they all nearly died because of him—the list goes on.Dean shakes his head, makes a low, shaky sound, too raw to be a laugh. "You're saying sorry to me?"Castiel frowns, uncertain what kind of answer Dean expects to that. Dean shakes his head, makes the raw sound again. "Of course you are. You fucking idiot. Come here, that collar is fucking coming off—" He pulls Castiel toward him, his breath ghosting against Castiel's ear, his hands fumbling at the collar, his arms protective and solid where they curve around Castiel's shoulders. It feels a little like a hug, and yet Castiel is aware that the gesture is to allow Dean access to the back of his neck, it's not an embrace. So he keeps his arms limp by his sides, and Dean makes a faint noise like swallowed, bitten-off words, while his hands brush against the back of Castiel's hair a few too many times for it to be accidental.With the collar's magic dissipated, Dean's fingers make quick work of the buckle that had been immovable before. Castiel tries to keep silent as Dean removes the item, but the spell that attacked his grace left physical marks as well, and he can't quite stifle a gasp of pain as the leather, sliding off, pulls at the blistered skin of his throat."Oh, God." Dean pulls back, looking horrified. "Fuck, I'm sorry." He drops his hands to Castiel's arms, only to let out another hiss of dismay. "Jesus Christ, your wrists, Cas—"Castiel blinks down at his wrists. He'd wrenched one arm free of the razor wire, scoring a set of long cuts down the back of his hand, and the wire itself is still wrapped around his other wrist, its tiny metal blades embedded in the skin. He barely feels it, his hands having long since gone numb."Cas, you're not healing," Dean says frantically, looking from Cas's wrists to his torso to his throat to, finally, his face. "Why aren't you healing?""I'm so—""Don't apologize. What's wrong? Did we do the spell wrong—did we hurt you—""My grace is drained," Castiel croaks. "Temporarily," he adds, seeing Dean's expression, though he feels for the tiny, stuttering core of grace that remains inside of him and isn't so sure about its chances of recovery. The situation is gradually starting to sink in—he's not dead, he's didn't die—and he frowns past Dean at Set's smoldering remains. "How...the fire...""That'd be me, love." The silky voice is all too familiar and Castiel finally turns his gaze away from Dean."Crowley," he mutters, disbelieving.The former King of Hell, looking only slightly ruffled, is standing a short distance away with his hands in his pockets and a self-satisfied expression on his face."What the hell, Crowley," Dean says angrily. He twists around to face Crowley, though he keeps his hands resting on Castiel's forearms. "Took you fucking long enough to get here."Crowley says, unperturbed, "Set warded this whole building against demon entry. Part and parcel of her incognito act, I suppose. Cheer up, I didn't abandon you. I fetched your mum, didn't I?""You almost got her killed!" Dean snaps. Castiel cringes. Dean is looking at Crowley, but surely his words are meant for Castiel as well."But your precious angel is alive, thanks to me, so some gratitude would be nice. You're lucky that my mother's spell had a bit of a blanket effect on the area and not just the collar. Broke the doors down for me, so to speak." He lifts a sardonic eyebrow. "Here's to our dear mums, eh?"Sam approaches, supporting a pale-faced Mary Winchester."Cas." Sam sounds—glad, though concerned, his expression a trademark mixture of relief and worry. He has one arm around his mother's shoulders, his other hand pressed to her stomach, applying pressure to the center of the crimson stain that covers half her shirt."Mary." Castiel struggles to sit up straighter. Dean's hand flits up to hold his shoulder, and Castiel has to resist the urge to simply collapse the rest of the way into Dean's arms. He's so tired. "I'm sorry...I can't...heal you right now.""What, this?" Mary's tired grin is taut but genuine. "Just a scratch.""Can you stand?" Dean asks him, his voice brusque suddenly, though it hasn't lost its undercurrent of warmth.Castiel hesitates. "I can try," he says."Take your time." There's a tentative smile on Dean's face as he glances at Sam and adds, "We're all kind of the walking wounded, here." The soft upward curve of his lips is beautiful, but the expression is directed toward Dean's family, a gift for them, and Castiel tries to ignore it and focus on his own limbs, assessing their weakness, weighing it against his own force of will.He draws his knees up, slowly shifting his center of gravity forwards. "Will you...can you..."He doesn't need to ask, as it turns out; Dean is already moving, his arms sliding under Castiel's with gentle deliberateness as he helps Castiel to stand. Being upright is dizzying, nauseating; Castiel has to close his eyes to shut out the spinning whirl of light and dark. He leans into Dean without meaning to, and to his surprise Dean leans back, slotting one arm around Castiel's waist and holding him up."I'm sorry," Castiel says again, though what he really wants to say is thank you and please and Dean and don't let me go.Dean doesn't acknowledge the apology. "If you can make it out of the building, we've got the Impala parked right outside."Castiel blinks blearily in the direction of the exit. "And then what?" He can't imagine what Dean intends to do with him. The Winchesters are still on the run, unless a great deal has changed in the time he's been a captive. And at the moment Castiel is essentially useless, the dregs of his grace not sufficient to heal Mary, or even to erase the bloody abrasions from Dean's wrists.Dean huffs in annoyance. "And then we're taking you home, moron."
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They get two motel rooms.Mary's stomach hurts, though the bleeding has more or less stopped. What's worse than the pain is the memories; she keeps blinking back to that night, to Sam's cries and the toothy grin of the demon who'd pinned her to the ceiling and gutted her in just this manner. The flashbacks, more than the injury itself, are what keep her from focusing on the drive back to the motel—the constant reliving of fire blood darkness and the thirty-year-old echoes of her own screams reverberating tinnily in her ears.Get the fuck over it, she chides. You're alive now, aren't you?As far as pep talks go, it's not the best, but she does manage to push the memories down, to be dealt with later. By the time Sam finishes wrapping about a yard of clean white gauze around her midsection as she sits on the motel bed holding the hem of her shirt out of the way, she's managed to subsume them like so many bad dreams. The wound isn't even that deep—if Set was going for Azazel's signature move, she certainly wasn't working as quickly. Besides, it's hard to feel sorry for herself when Castiel appears to have literally been skinned alive."Cas'll be okay," her younger son says, as if reading her mind."He looked pretty bad, Sam," says Mary. Dean, who'd let Sam drive so that he could sit in the back with his arms wrapped around the semi-conscious angel, has taken Castiel into the room across the hall.Sam tucks in the end of the bandage and Mary rolls her shirt back down over her stomach. "He's come back from worse.""Really," says Mary doubtfully."In a manner of speaking. At least he's alive, this time." He smiles. "Thanks to you.""And you and Dean," says Mary."And...Crowley," she adds reluctantly. She'd worked with the demon, let him transport her to the warehouse, because she'd had to—she couldn't afford not to, not when Sam and Dean might be on the balance—but that doesn't mean she has to like him.Sam nods, but his expression has gone introspective and he doesn't say anything for a few minutes. Mary reaches for her water bottle, sitting on the bedside table, and drinks half of it. It helps wash the taste of her own blood out of her mouth."I'm sorry," says Sam abruptly. She looks up to see him staring earnestly at her."Don't be." Mary puts a hand over the bandages. "Tis but a flesh wound." She pauses. "Wait. That's still a thing, right?"Sam laughs, a rich, warm, surprised laugh, and it's the best sound she's heard all day. "Yeah, Mom. That's definitely still a thing." His tone goes serious again. "But that's not what I mean. We shouldn't have tried to make you sit this one out."Mary snorts. "Yeah, that didn't work out too well for you, did it?""It did not," Sam admits. "We were pretty stupid on this one. On a lot of fronts.""Well," she says, "if I'd gone in at the start I would have been in the same position as you. So it was good that I stayed behind. So that I could save your asses.""Yeah," says Sam."Doesn't mean you get to bench me again.""Yeah."They grin at each other like idiots for a moment.The door opens softly and Dean sidles into the room. He's limping slightly, though the bullet only grazed his leg and the injury is already neatly bandaged. "He's all tucked in. Still not healing.""Did you at least stitch him up?" says Mary, though she thinks of the horrific wounds on Castiel's torso and doubts there was enough intact skin left for such treatment.Dean shrugs. "He didn't want me to. Says he'll heal. I think the bleeding might have stopped, too." He grimaces. "We're going to be paying for the blankets, though.""You must like this one," says Sam dryly. "Normally you suggest cutting and running to avoid the fees." He glances at Mary. "Dean's gotten us banned from a lot of places.""Snitches get stitches, Sammy.""Boys," says Mary.Sam grins, but Dean seems preoccupied. He gives her an evaluative glance, his eyes flickering over the scattered first aid supplies. "How you doing?""I've come back from worse," Mary says, borrowing Sam's phrase.Dean nods. He looks tired suddenly, drained. "I'm sorry, Mom. We almost got you killed and I—""Dean," says Mary firmly, "I was raised by hunters. I know the risks. Also, you're welcome."Her elder son finally cracks a smile, sinking into the armchair and running his hands through his hair, then grimacing and wiping his hands on his damp, petrol-scented clothes. "I need a shower.""Nope, I'm going first," says Sam, making a beeline for the bathroom. "She poured way more gas on me than on you.""Liar," Dean mutters, but he doesn't make a move to get up as Sam closes the door behind him.Mary waits until she hears the sound of the shower starting up before raising her eyebrows pointedly at Dean. "Don't you want to sit with him?""With Sam—? You've got the wrong idea, Mom—"Blockhead. "With Castiel, honey."Dean makes a sound as if trying to clear his throat. He looks flustered. "He's probably asleep by now—he needs to rest.""Bullshit." Mary feels a little bad at Dean's guilty squirm as she calls him out. The pain seems to be loosening her tongue, though, or maybe she's just tired of trying to be subtle. "Do you honestly think he doesn't need you?"And that right there, she realizes, seeing the almost imperceptible way Dean flinches, is exactly it. Or part of it, anyway—there's so many issues here, layered one atop another until they're practically fossilized, that she doubts she's going to be able to hit on more than one or two."He's an angel, Mom," Dean is saying, his gaze sliding away from hers."He nearly died for you, Dean.""I know," Dean mutters. "That's the problem.""He's allowed to make his own choices—""He's not allowed to give up!" Dean bursts out, eyes flashing a furious green for a moment. "He can't just—I can't—I need him—" He stops, his face darkening in a flush as his gaze drops back down to his feet.Mary lets the silence stretch for a moment, and then she says gently, "I know. But it can't just be about what you need, Dean. It has to be about what you want. And about what he wants."Dean looks up. His face is pale—he looks afraid. In a way he looks almost as afraid as when he'd been cuffed to a pillar in that warehouse. Mary waits."I want him to stay," her son falters finally. His voice is barely above a whisper.It's a lukewarm answer, Mary thinks, but it's a start, at least. "Then go tell him that.""I don't..." Dean swallows, looks away again. "I don't know what he wants."The shower, she realizes belatedly, has stopped running at some point, and through the bathroom door they both hear Sam's very audible snort of disbelief.***When Dean, still silently cursing his brother's superhuman hearing, opens the door to the other motel room, it's to find Cas halfway out of bed, his forehead resting on the edge of the small end table, his arm outstretched along the surface towards the lamp."Cas," says Dean in alarm, hurrying forward to grip the angel by the shoulder as firmly as he dares. "Cas, man, what—"Cas raises his head a few inches off the table. Even in the dimness of the room Dean can make out the bruised and bloody patterns on his friend's face, and guilt twists in his gut. Guilt because he and Sam didn't find Cas sooner. Guilt because Cas suffered for four days, alone, at Set's hand. Guilt because, beneath everything, what he's also feeling is deep relief. After all, he'll take this; he'll take Cas beaten and bloodied and in pain, because hell, Cas is still alive, and for a few minutes that hadn't seemed at all likely to be the outcome. I almost lost him, Dean thinks. I almost fucking lost him."I wanted..." Cas looks absolutely wrecked, his eyes hollow. "I'm sorry, I just...the light..."Dean carefully slides his other arm under Cas's chest and lifts, because it doesn't seem like Cas is capable of sitting up on his own right now. "If you needed the stupid lamp you should have just waited for me to come back, okay? You looked like you were about to pass out.""I still feel like I'm there." Cas blinks miserably, his hands trembling even as they clutch at Dean's shirtsleeves. "In the building. In the warehouse, with her. Just...the blood, and the smell, and the oil, and...and the dark."Shit, Dean thinks. He should have left a light on. He carefully maneuvers Cas onto his back in the bed, drawing the covers up over his chest to hide the worst of the injuries. Cas slumps back into the pillows, a small shiver racking his body as his hands clench briefly into fists."I hate this," he rasps. "I hate that you're seeing me like—" He breaks off with a hoarse cough.Dean doesn't know how to respond, so he reaches over belatedly to switch on the bedside lamp. "I'm sorry, I should have turned it on before I left.""Don't...apologize.""Hey, that's my line," Dean chides, trying to smile while mentally berating himself for leaving Cas, alone and in the dark, even for a few minutes. The yellow glow of the lamplight is making Cas's injuries look even worse. He sits on the edge of the bed, slowly easing down onto the mattress, trying not to jostle the angel. "Still not healing, huh?"Cas gives the barest shake of his head. His arms are resting by his sides, on top of the covers, and his fingers twitch as if in frustration. "I can feel my grace starting to recover, but...it'll take some time. And I'm directing it internally, to the worst injuries first."Fuck. Dean hadn't realized there were worse injuries, unseen, to contend with. "Are you sure you don't want me and Sam to try to patch you up?""No, there's no need." Cas closes his eyes. "I'm afraid the sheets will need to be thoroughly washed, though," he mumbles."Dude, don't worry about the sheets. Just focus on getting better.""Believe it or not, I am trying," says Cas dryly, somehow managing to crank out the sarcasm even with half his body beaten to a pulp."Did she...did she..." Dean hesitates, afraid of the answer. But he has to ask. "She said she did stuff to your wings...""She didn't," says Cas, and Dean feels relief ghost through him. Cas shifts a little beneath the covers. "She only used angel blades to incapacitate me—once she had put the collar on me, she switched to...other tools, and only damaged my vessel."Damaged my vessel, Dean thinks. It's such a clinical phrase, while the injuries hidden beneath the covers are anything but. He shifts a little, looking down at his knees as he tries to find words for what he wants to say next."Set told me and Sam about how she'd." He swallows. "How she'd ask you questions, about us. Me and Sam.""I told her what she wanted to know." Cas curls his fingers into the covers. "I'm sorry, Dean...it was nothing she could have used against you, I was sure of it, but I—she cut, and she cut, and—I was weak, I couldn't, I told her.""Hey, hey." Dean touches Cas's wrist, trying to stop the torrent of blurted confessions, the mentions of torture that have his insides twisting yet again, because those are things that belong in Hell, down in the darkness and the blood and the fire, those are things that Dean belongs to, but not Cas, never Cas. "It was stupid stuff.""It wasn't stupid. It was—it was part of you, it was about you. I didn't..." Cas falters. "I didn't want her to have it."The statement hovers in the air between them, a raw thing, naked and vulnerable. Dean realizes that he hasn't withdrawn his hand; the fingertips are still resting lightly on the skin of Cas's wrist. He wonders if he would feel a pulse, if he reached underneath it, if Jimmy's heart still beats inside the half-flayed chest now home to an angel."I'd rather her have that than..." He falters too, then relaxes his arm, lets his hand drop so that it covers Cas's. I almost lost him. "I'd rather her have that stuff than have you."Cas doesn't move his arm; Dean can feel the smooth skin on the back of Cas's hand, warm against his fingertips, and the knuckles of Cas's curled fingers against his palm. Cas still looks uncertain, afraid. Like he's expecting the other shoe to drop at any minute. And why not, Dean thinks. It's dropped every other time.He watches Cas's gaze slide away from him again, and steels himself. We never talk, he thinks. We never fucking talk. All those things I never fucking ask him. He needs to make sure that Cas is okay; for once, he needs to pry down into the deeper levels of Cas's well-being, the places where he's never cared to intrude as long as everything held together on the surface, and make sure."Cas, about what happened back there. In the warehouse."Cas immediately takes a shaky breath, as if he's been waiting for this. "Dean, I'm sorry. No, listen—" He plows on as Dean opens his mouth. "I know you're upset with me. I know I put everyone in danger. I know I—" His voice cracks. "I know I let you down, and you were trapped because of me. I was careless when I fought Set, you and Sam could have been killed, I was trying—I wanted to redee—to fix—""Dude. Cas. Just, stop." Dean holds his hands up. "You listen, okay?"Cas falls silent and stares up at him with huge eyes.Dean swallows hard, and takes a moment to think, because he needs to get this right. "You didn't put us in danger. That's not what happened." He says the sentences slowly, carefully, with conviction. "Fuck, you were the one in danger. You got in trouble, we went in after you. That's how it works." Cas looks as though he's about to make a retort, and Deam steamrolls over it. "No, that's how it works, Cas. And we screwed up the rescue pretty monumentally, okay? We didn't have your back, we let you down." He runs his free hand through his hair. "Hell, I should be apologizing to you." He pauses, then adds. "Which I am. I'm sorry."Cas lets out a slow, soft exhale. "You're not...angry, then.""No." Dean hesitates. "I mean, yes, a little. Not because of any of that stuff you said."He waits, but there's no comprehension in his Cas's. eyes. Exasperated, Dean says, "You almost got yourself killed, Cas. I mean, you were incredible, but—" he has to stop for a moment, suck in a breath as he remembers, again, the horror of it, the searing horror of standing helplessly while the flames lapped toward Cas— "but you almost—you almost—""Set was a danger," says Cas, as if that explains everything. "It was my fault you and Sam were in that situation. I had to stop her.""I know, Cas. You were—fuck, you were amazing back there, okay? I don't know how you even managed to stand, but—yeah. I just—" I almost lost you. "It was reckless. And you knew how it was going to play out, I know you knew, and you—" He laughs, unsteadily, trying to cover up the way his words are stuttering to a halt. You almost left me. "Guess I just don't like it when anyone else goes for the sacrifice play.""There was no time to formulate an alternative strategy," says Cas stubbornly. "I had to make sure that you and Sam would be alright.""Alright, Cas? Really? You really think I'd have been alright if I'd lost you?"And this gets to Cas, Dean can see that. That little furrow appears in his brow, and he blinks. "I thought..." His voice is halting, doubtful."Listen to me. I know what it's like to not feel like your life is valuable, like the most important thing is ganking the bad guy, finishing the mission, protecting everyone else. I know, Cas." Cas shifts his gaze, looks away, so Dean closes his hand over Cas's, squeezing insistently until the angel meets his eyes again. "But you're not expendable like that, Cas. You're not. You threw yourself into the line of fire with Lucifer, and yeah, maybe that was the right call at the time, but that doesn't mean we were okay losing you to that son of a bitch. It doesn't mean I would have been alright if...if I hadn't gotten you back."Cas just looks at him, silent, wide-eyed. His lips are slightly parted and Dean suddenly wants to reach out and touch them—run his fingers along the edge of the upper lip, press them against the chapped curve of the lower. He pushes past the impulse, the sudden whisper of desire that rises up from some deep corner where it's been sequestered for fuck knows how long, and continues insistently, "And I wouldn't have been alright this time, either. I need you, man. Here. Not burned to a crisp in some warehouse.""And...when you say alright..." Cas's voice has dropped back to a whisper. "...you mean...""I mean that I would have been fucking heartbroken, Cas," says Dean, because the time for subtlety is over. "I mean that losing you would have been the worst fucking thing in the world, alright?" He tightens his grip on Cas's hand. "And if you haven't realized by now how much you mean to me, then you're—then it's because I've been too much of an idiot to say. Okay? You're not replaceable. You're not a tool. You're not a hammer. You're more important than that, not because of how you help, or what you do for us, but because of you.""...oh." It's almost inaudible. Then, a little louder, "I'm glad I'm of use."For fuck's sake, Dean thinks, and racks his brain for something else he can say, something that'll get through to Cas. He's coming up blank—he's always struggled with that express your feelings stuff that Sam gets off to, always been better with actions—but then Cas moves his hand. Dean immediately loosens his grip, worried that he's overstepped somehow; there must be lines, after all, even though he's pretty sure that he's the one who first drew them in the metaphorical sand. But Cas doesn't pull his hand back. Instead he just turns it over, very slowly, and leaves it there, so that Dean's hand ends up resting against it, palm to palm.Dean catches his breath, looking down at their hands, pressed together on the bedspread, and the torrent of want that suddenly bubbles up inside him is almost more than he can bear. He wants to turn his wrist, interlock his fingers with Cas's. He wants to lean down and press his face into Cas's hair. Fuck, he wants to kiss Cas. On the lips, on the forehead, on the tips of his fingers. On every wound that Set inflicted, every inch of bruised skin. He wants and he wants, but even if he's finally ready to admit it to himself, he still doesn't know how to ask for any of these things.He clears his throat and tears his eyes away, and his brain hastily supplies a change of subject. "Hey, Sam grabbed your coat and stuff, too." He points to the pile on the desk by the window. "Um, what was left of them anyway. They're pretty beat up. But once you recharge your batteries you'll be able to fix them, right?"Cas looks over at the clothes, but doesn't say anything. Dean fidgets, waiting. He's hyperaware of how Cas's hand feels beneath his own, of how easy it would be to press his thumb against Cas's palm, run it along the lines etched there.Finally Cas says, his voice small and hollow, "Do you see me?"Dean frowns. "What do you mean?""I mean...do you see me?" Cas looks back at him, his eyes ink-dark in the lamplight. "When you look at me...the clothes I wear, the way I walk, the way I look...do you see me, or Lucifer?"Dean goes cold all over. "Of course I see you," he says, nonplussed, because of course he does, but as he stares down at Cas's expression, seeing the taut misery and uncertainty there, he realizes he needs to say more. A simple affirmation isn't going to be enough, not for this. And he thinks, is this what I've been doing? Is this what he's been building, with his dodges and his avoidance and his constant fear of anything new, anything real? This specter in Cas's mind, a Devil that clings to his vessel and wears his clothes even after the real thing was cast out? Is this what Cas believes now, that Dean can't distinguish him from Lucifer?He's waited too long; Cas makes a tiny, soft sound of resignation, and closes his eyes. Fuck, Dean thinks. He takes a deep, even breath. Actions. He's better with actions."Can you stand?" He amends it quickly. "Well, you probably can't, but will you let me help you stand?"Cas's doesn't open his eyes, but his expression becomes slightly mulish. "Do I have to?"Dean swallows, pushing down the apprehension in his stomach. He stands up but keeps his hand resting on Cas's, curling the fingers slightly around Cas's wrist. "Trust me."He doesn't have a right to ask that, not after everything, but miracles, it seems, still exist, for Cas nods, and slowly, his hand still beneath Dean's, begins to sit up.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Cas doesn't make a sound on the way to the bathroom, but his expression is rigid with pain and his grip on Dean's arm tightens with each step. It's disconcerting, seeing his injuries still open to the air like that—they might not actively be bleeding, but it's still distressingly like leading a walking corpse, and Dean wishes Cas had let himself be patched up, at least a little.He finally manages to get Cas into the small bathroom and helps him sit down on the lid of the toilet. "Sit tight," he says with forced cheer, but it's pretty clear the angel isn't going anywhere. Cas sits hunched in on himself, swaying slightly, only his eyes moving as he tracks Dean's movements. He looks fucking exhausted. Resigned, almost, as if even after everything he still half-expects Dean to try to drown him in the sink.Dean sighs inwardly and goes to turn on the water in the tub, testing it with his hand as it warms up."What are you doing?" says Cas wearily."Helping you wash all the holy oil gunk off," says Dean. He feels himself flushing a little. "Um. If that's okay with you." Cas is looking at him with perplexed eyes and slightly parted lips, and although the blood is drying dark on his skin and in the exposed raw tracts on his chest, he still looks—beautiful, Dean's brain supplies unhelpfully. Awe-inspiring. Wholly and utterly Castiel. He's something ancient and weary and battle-scarred and fucking breathtaking, not someone Dean should presume to assist."That's not...that isn't necessary. You don't need to help." Cas sits up straighter, though the movement only brings his injuries into sharper relief. Half-unclothed on the toilet, his hair mussed and a faint guardedness in the set of his shoulders, he seems vulnerable, a wild and wary thing."I can manage on my own.""Cas." Dean summons all his courage, looks Cas in the eye, makes himself presume, makes himself bite the bullet he's so used to dodging. "Please. Let me help you."Cas just stares at him for a moment, and then he slowly starts fumbling with his belt. Dean averts his eyes and busies himself with the water, aware by the growing sensation of warmth that the flush is creeping down the back of his neck.He's forgotten angelic sensibilities, or the lack thereof, so he expects Cas to keep his underwear on, and he almost falls into the tub when he turns around and sees a completely nude angel standing in front of the toilet, looking solemnly at him."Uh—Cas—" he stutters, and fuck, all his defenses are so automatic, so ingrained in him that he almost says just down to your boxers, dude, almost says put your junk away, come on. But he doesn't. He swallows, hard, folds the instincts away, looks up from Cas's decidedly uninjured legs and groin. "You—um, you gonna get in, or what?"Cas studies him for a long moment. It's a searching, piercing look, but there's nothing charged about it, no hint of the unvoiced tension that's hung between them for—years, really, if Dean is honest with himself.For a moment, Dean wonders if Cas feels any different, standing naked before him, or if, for all that he's changed in the past years, clothes and nudity still mean as little to him as they would to any cold-eyed angel fresh out of Heaven. But then he sees Cas's gaze flicker slightly, the barest hint of challenge, or perhaps it's fear. Sees Cas's Adam's apple shift as he swallows. Sees what, underneath the dark bruising marring Cas's face, is unmistakably a faint flush to match Dean's own. Cas isn't unaffected, then—he's been human before, he isn't a stranger to human attraction and physicality. But that doesn't matter, not right now. This isn't about trying to figure out what (or who) Cas might be interested in, or what Cas might think about his own body or—or—anyone else's. This, Dean tells himself, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on Cas's face, this right now, right here, isn't about attraction, or desire, or the various interested thoughts his dick is having right now. This is about Cas, this is about taking care of the bloodied, shivering angel who's standing in front of Dean now, who's made the deliberate decision to trust him.These thoughts run through Dean's head like lightning, and it almost catches him by surprise when Cas abruptly turns and steps into the tub, water sloshing around his ankles as he leans against the wall for support."It'll be easier if you sit down," says Dean, hesitantly. He half-turns, trying to preserve a modicum of privacy for Cas, and busies himself by scrubbing the complimentary bar of soap against a washcloth. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches as Cas slowly slides down to the bottom of the tub, drawing his knees up to his chest. He lets out a low hiss of pain when the water touches his injured back."Too hot?""No...it's alright." Cas's head droops a little. He's clearly still in pain, but Dean notes with some relief that no telltale curls of red are spreading through the water. Dean hands him the washcloth, watches Cas splash water first over his face, then over his bloody chest. It might be just Dean's imagination, but on closer inspection does seem like more skin is visible now, and perhaps the cuts are little shallower. It's a hopeful thought, and he refrains from commenting on it just in case he's mistaken.Cas reaches over to scrub at his shoulder, but stops with a wince. His eyes slide half-closed, his jaw suddenly rigid, and he withdraws his arm to its former position, fingers clenching around the washcloth."Moving still hurts?""A little. Reaching, mostly." Cas looks up apologetically, knotting the washcloth in his hand."I'll do your back, then." Dean takes the cloth before Cas can protest. He kneels beside the tub, wincing as a small bolt of pain shoots through his injured leg. Cas hesitates only for a moment before he slowly extends one arm. Dean takes hold of Cas's wrist in his free hand, holding it lightly in place so that he can run the washcloth carefully along Cas's arm and up to his shoulder, soaping away the coating of oil, cleaning dried blood off the intact skin. He's careful, but he can't completely avoid the open cuts and scrapes, and Cas draws in a breath that sounds like a gasp, fingers closing around Dean's wrist in return."Sorry," Dean mutters, trying to work quickly and gently at the same time, "sorry, sorry.""No, it's—" Cas blinks and takes another trembling breath, his head still lowered, his eyes darting to Dean's and then away again. His thumb is moving almost unconsciously, tracing a small circle against the pulse point of Dean's wrist. "It's good."Dean doubts that good is what Cas is actually feeling right now, but he leans over to reach Cas shoulders and upper back, then his other arm. He tries not to look more than is strictly necessary, but he can't help being acutely aware of how Cas is shaped—the contours of him, the lines and planes and angles that are intact even beneath the ruined skin. His ear is inches from Cas's face and he can hear the soft, ragged rhythm of Cas's breath as the angel turns sideways to bring his shoulder closer to the edge of the tub."There you go." Dean hands the washcloth back to Cas, looks away again while the angel silently cleans oil off his chest and stomach. His fingers itch to keep helping—he wants to trail them over the ruin Set left of his friend's body, reassure himself that Cas is still present underneath the torn skin and shredded muscle. He wants to lay Cas out horizontal in the water, anoint him with dabs of cheap motel soap, pore over every inch of him and hold it together by whatever means necessary. He wants the chance to make Cas whole, for once, instead of breaking him.The tub is beginning to brim, so Dean reaches over to turn off the faucet. "Okay." He coughs a little. "Um. If you turn around, I can get to your hair easier."Cas nods and slowly repositions himself so that he's sitting with his back to Dean, his legs drawn up towards his chest so that he fits cross-wise in the tub. His movements are slow and jerky, and the irregular catches in his breathing are even more noticeable now that the water's no longer running.Dean takes a breath. "Is this okay?" he says. He curls his fingers against the edge of the tub, waiting. He doesn't want to push, he doesn't want to take—right now he wants, more than anything, to give to Cas, instead of demanding. "Cas.""Dean," Cas murmurs in reply, absently as if he hasn't really heard the question. Then he shakes himself and says, a little louder, "Yes—it's okay."Good enough, Dean thinks, hoping that believing it will make it true. He squeezes the whole bottle of crappy motel shampoo into Cas's hair and runs his fingers through it, again and again until the slickness of the oil is replaced by the thinner slipperiness of the lathered shampoo. And he keeps going, working his hands through Cas's hair, massaging the scalp lightly the way he used to do when running a bath for Sam, when they were both little kids.Cas lets out a tiny sigh and relaxes a fraction of an inch against the side of the tub. "That feels nice," he says quietly."Good." Dean shifts a little, trying to take some of the pressure off his injured leg. He smoothes Cas's hair back, musses it up again. Lets his hands stray briefly down towards the base of Cas's neck, kneading at the muscle there."I meant it, you know." Cas has sunk into the water up to his chin. "When I was fighting Set. I would have counted it as a victory, if I'd saved you. Even if it cost my life."And okay, what the fuck is Dean supposed to say to that?"But I felt regret," Cas's voice is a bare, rough whisper. It tugs at Dean, pulling at his insides. "At the thought of...of leaving.""So don't." The words are out before Dean can stop himself. "Don't leave.""I don't intend to abandon you and Sam and Mary. You're still in danger—""No," Dean interrupts. Might as well leave it all on the line, he figures. "That's not what I mean. I mean...stay. With me. Danger or not."Cas goes completely still, but he doesn't respond, and Dean bites his lip. "I mean. If you want to." He's nervous, his hands twining through Cas's hair as if they have a mind of their own. He can't see Cas's face, doesn't know what expression covers it in the pause that follows."I'll stay as long as you need me to," Cas says, and he sounds uncertain, as if he isn't sure what the correct response is.Always, Dean thinks, I always need you.It has to be about what you want, Dean. He knows what he wants. He's always known, even if he's never been able to admit it to himself."And what if I want you to stay?" He can barely get the words out; they catch in his chest, tearing things free as they go, small secret things that he's never allowed himself to think, never allowed himself to desire. "Will you...will you stay if I just want you to?""With you?" Cas shifts; the water makes soft splashing noises as it laps against his chest."Yeah," Dean chokes out. "Yeah, I want you to—stay with me." The confession floats in the warm air, a delicate thing, fragile and irrevocable. His hands are trembling. He droops forward, presses his nose against the back of Cas's head. He can smell the soap and shampoo, the cheap fragrance mingling with the sharp scent of Cas's blood. "You and me, Cas.""You and me," Cas echoes distantly, sounding almost puzzled, as if the words make no sense to him. "Like you pra...like you said, after—""—after Amara, I know. I didn't follow through. I was a dumbass, okay?" Water from Cas's hair trickles down Dean's face. "I was afraid. But I—you're—" He closes his eyes. He's dug himself in too deep to turn back now, but it's still so hard to get the words out, so hard to lay bare what he's spent years hiding. You almost lost him. So say it now. "—it's what I want.""I didn't know." Cas still sounds hesitant, but it's a different kind of uncertainty now, wonder instead of caution. "I didn't know you felt that way."Always. "I—I do, yeah.""Then I'll stay." There's a warmth there now, an earnestness. "Of course I'll stay."Funny how so few words can send light rushing through him, spilling out inside him like the sun. Dean sits up a little straighter, looks at the back of Cas's head. "Yeah?""I always...I always want to stay," Cas says softly. "But—how can you want—after everything I've—""That shit doesn't matter, Cas." Dean puts all the vehemence he has into that statement, and Cas takes another shuddering breath. "You think I could hold anything against you, after all the crap I've—" He breaks off, shakes his head for emphasis, though he knows Cas can't see. "It doesn't—none of it matters. Just you. You're—everything, and—I want—" He breaks off, trying to fit words to all the feelings that suddenly crowd up inside him. He's overcome by all of this, all of what's happening, the enormousness of it, the suddenness. "Anything," he promises, for lack of a better conclusion. "Anything, Cas, with you."At some point his hands have dropped to rest on Cas's shoulders, and he's suddenly aware, in a way he hadn't completely been before, that Cas is sitting in front of him, naked beneath the sudsy water. The thought makes something heavy and warm coil in the pit of his stomach, though he knows that this isn't the time, that he needs to get a fucking grip, that right now Cas's wellbeing is the priority. He doesn't want to push—he doesn't want to take. But unbidden, his mind proffers the image of Cas standing unclothed by the tub: the slender, muscular lines of his legs, the curving points of his hip bones just visible beneath the pale skin, and his—"Alright, well." Cas gives a tiny start as Dean hastily breaks the silence, his mouth dry with mingled desire and worry, don't push echoing like a mantra inside his head. "Time to rinse off, looks like the Gulf of Mexico in here." The surface of the water glimmers with oil as Dean reaches his hand into the water and opens the drain.Cas catches his hand by the wrist before he can withdraw it. The angel cranes his head back to look at Dean. His face is clean of blood, though the bruises still scrawl a dark pattern beneath the skin. His eyes are blindingly blue. "You need to shower, too."Dean really does; the fumes from his own gasoline-drenched clothes and body are making him nauseous. Sam's probably out by now. But he shakes his head; he wants to take care of Cas first. "I'll go after you're out."Cas doesn't let go of his wrist. "If you want," and he sounds shy, almost afraid, "if you don't want to wait, you could..." He trails off, a fragile catch in his voice, the words stuttering to a halt. But his eyes make the message clear."Yeah," Dean says. His heart is suddenly pounding. "Yeah, okay."***Castiel doesn't watch as Dean stands and strips off his clothing. He sits against one end of the tub and lowers his chin to his chest, and doesn't look as Dean steps wordlessly into the tub. He can hear Dean's breathing, how it's sped up, but fainter too, as if Dean's afraid to make too much noise, afraid to exhale too strongly.The sudden start of the shower, the ringing noise the water makes as it strikes the tile, shouldn't take Castiel by surprise. But it does; he twitches at the sound and wraps his arms more closely around his bent legs, ignoring the stabs of pain that flash over his torso. He keeps his eyes fixed on the bottom of the tub. He can see Dean's bare feet, side by side as Dean stands under the heated spray. It's strange to think of Dean standing unclothed before him, mere inches away. He knows Dean's body, of course; he rebuilt it from scratch, reconstructed it down to the molecule and sealed it shut around Dean's soul. But that was years ago, and this is different, in ways that angels have no words for, ways that make small coils of desire curl and shift inside him.So he keeps his head down—uncertain, still, of where he stands with Dean, or into what new shape they have come to rest. Of what is between them now, of what might yet be. But he can't stop the images his mind supplies of Dean standing naked under the torrent of water, can't stop the steady swell of heat in his face and chest and groin, physical reactions that he's come to recognize and learn the meaning of in the years since that first fateful meeting.Dean doesn't say anything as he scrubs himself silently with the same soapy washcloth he'd used to clean the oil from Castiel's arms and shoulders. He moves briskly now, though when he'd touched Castiel his hands had been deft and gentle. The memory makes Castiel's skin prickle with a warmth that has nothing to do with the shower. You and me, Dean had said, the words like surrender and triumph at once.Castiel lifts his chin a little, starts to shift his gaze upward, but he pauses as he catches sight of Dean's injured leg, the clean white wrapping of the bandage, soaked through now with water. The sight poisons the fragile peace he'd been feeling, makes him want to coil deeper into himself. It's a minor injury, really, but somehow this makes it all the worse that he can't even heal it. He closes his eyes to block out the evidence of his shortcomings. He thinks, with a sudden surge of bitterness, that at least when his vessel was home to Lucifer it wielded the grace of an archangel. And now it holds only Castiel, and so only his own dwindled power. It's a set of undesirable outcomes that that he can't seem to stop flipping between—he's evil or he's weak, he's villain or liability. And yet—I want you to stay, Dean had said, his voice warm and brimming with truth, trust, certainty.Castiel believes in that voice; he's always believed Dean. And even in the light of his present weakness, he can't deny the warmth rising within him now. The soft glow that has flared to life in the wake of Dean's words feels a great deal like—like—he doesn't know, exactly, but he thinks it must be a bit like happiness. And yet Dean can't know what he's asking, what he's offering, what Castiel is now, what little there's left of him, scraped out in Lucifer's wake, tainted and hollow and toxic. He's going to hurt people again—his choices, his actions, his foolishness. He's going to hurt Dean again. Dean must realize that. There's no reason Dean should want him to—to—He screws his eyes more tightly shut. From above, he hears Dean let out a soft, unsteady sigh, and water splashes against the walls of the still-draining tub as Dean moves forward."Cas," says Dean.Castiel opens his eyes, blinking at Dean through the spray. Dean crouches down so that they're at eye level. "Cas, I see you."It's not true, Castiel thinks, shrinking back from Dean's intent eyes. He might appear as Castiel but he will always look like Lucifer as well, always carry Lucifer's imprint alongside his own. He will always be the angel who said yes to Lucifer, he will always be the angel who for months was the Devil. The Devil walked and talked yet again on this earth and the Devil was him."Cas, I see you," Dean repeats insistently. Castiel isn't even aware that he's shaking his head until Dean reaches out and puts his hands on either side of it, cradles Castiel's face between wet palms. "I always saw you."Castiel hears himself make a soft, uncertain noise. He shouldn't let himself accept what he doesn't deserve. He shouldn't accept the touch of Dean's hands, the gentleness of Dean's voice, the forgiveness inherent in Dean's words. But he wants these things, he wants them desperately.Dean leans forward, presses their foreheads together. "I see you," he whispers into the gap between their faces. I see you. The prayer floats up behind Dean's voice, strong and sure and deliberate. Dean is praying, purposefully, unhesitatingly, and layered beneath the words are memories. Castiel catches flickering images of Lucifer wearing his vessel, feels the echo of Dean's impotent rage and longing. And more; Dean is pushing them out toward him, holding nothing back. Castiel sees himself shudder awake on the ground, freed of the Devil's grip, tastes the sudden sweetness of the relief that blooms in Dean, the dissipation of months of worry. I will always see you.Castiel watches himself collapse in the warehouse, watches flames whirl outward from Set, feels Dean's maelstrom of terror, anguish, loss, rage. In the lamplit motel room Castiel hears himself ask do you see me, hears in Dean's startled response the full torrent of surprise, confusion, sadness, guilt, compassion, longing, frustration, certainty, love, that tumbles, unsaid, behind what was spoken."I see you," Dean repeats, moving even closer. His eyes are a sharp and unrepentant green. "I see you," he murmurs into the curve of Castiel's mouth, moving his hands, tangling his fingers in Castiel's wet hair. I see you. I see you, Cas. Dean's nose bumps against Castiel's; Dean's lips are soapy and warm. There's not a hint of the scent of holy oil left in the air. Do you understand? Do you believe me?Castiel shivers."Yes," he says.***They wrap themselves in thin white motel towels and lie side by side on the bed."I didn't bring any spare clothes," says Dean ruefully."Your room is right across the hall.""Yeah," Dean admits. But he makes no move to get up. Castiel turns his head to look at him. The yellow lamplight is far steadier than the light of flames had been, and it throws a warm glow over Dean's features. This close, Castiel can count the freckles dotting Dean's nose, trace the curved fringe of his eyelashes.He wants to lean in, to close the distance between them. It's a desire he's pushed down before. But—anything, with you, Dean had said. So he does.Dean kisses back, open-mouthed, quiet, careful.They break apart after a long moment, though it still feels too short to Castiel."You're healing." Dean smiles and lifts one hand to brush fingers against Castiel's shoulder, over the cuts that are beginning to close up."Yes," Castiel says, and thinks to himself, not for the first time, that Dean's smile is the most beautiful and radiant thing.Dean moves his hand up, lets it rest against Castiel's cheekbone, the touch feather-light. "You and me, Cas." It's half a question, and Castiel smiles too, an expression that pulls at the bruises on his face but feels good nevertheless."Yes."They roll back to lie face-up, relaxing into the lumpy mattress, water seeping from their hair and dampening the beige comforter beneath them."Hey Cas," Dean says after another long minute. "What's your favorite color?"