Archive of Our Own

The early morning light seeped through the window blind of Bobby's place, just enough to illuminate Castiel's face. It looked almost as if the angel was irradiating from inside by himself.

Dean looked at that face -- with all the lines on the skin, the silhouette of his nose bridge in the thin light, the shadow it cast on his cheeks, the lips that looked always too dry, too thin, too harsh. Dean wondered how much he saw was the human vessel, and how much was the real angel.

"You think of the seals as locks on a door," Castiel was saying flatly. That might be his first attempt of making an analogy -- a joke, almost -- using Dean's language, just so that the human could understand.

And Dean did. He stared at the angel intensely, eyes scanning his face, searching. "Okay. Last one opens and...?"

Castiel stood straight slowly, looking at him directly into his eyes and his soul. His voice was even lower than before as he leaned in closer, as if speaking it out loud would make it come true, as if he wanted to keep it a secret only between them, a taboo he wasn't supposed to share with a human but he couldn't hide from the man before him. "Lucifer walks free."

Dean's eyes widened. "Lucifer?"

Castiel returned with a small nod, so small that not even the air before him was moved. Dean certainly felt the air around him was taken just by that.

A gasp was forming but he swallowed it down. "I thought Lucifer was just a story they told at demon Sunday School. There's no such thing." Panic rose quickly in his chest, but he tried to press them down so hard, to appear brave, to appear a soldier like he was always trained to be. His eyes were still locked on Castiel, not blinking once. What he saw grounded him.

"Three days ago, you thought there was no such thing as me," Castiel answered, almost amused. The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly, curving up in amusement, remembering the first time they met, the blast and the blade on his chest, the awe in the human's eyes when he looked at the shadow of his wings. He wondered if he should pull that act again, just to remind him of what he was. Hopefully it was not necessary, and that Dean could just understand, just cooperate.

Dean's eyes fell onto his curled lips, lingering there for a moment too long. He remembered the exact same moment -- there was no way they had only met for three days, did they? It felt like he had known Castiel for far longer than days, or weeks, or even months. Forty years, he thought painfully, wincing, how many of them did he spend watching angels coming down for him but he couldn't remember now? How many of them did Castiel spend fighting all the way down to the deepest Pit to reach him, grab him, raise him, and rebuild him? He couldn't even begin to imagine.

This is the angel who saved him from Hell and told him that he deserved to be saved. When no one else did. Not even himself. Dean swallowed hard, feeling his tongue and lips too dry. He licked his lips.

Castiel continued, his eyes never leaving Dean, not missing any move, "Why do you think we're here? Walking among you now, for the first time in two thousand years?"

Dean had to pull his eyes away from those lips that were telling him horrible things -- things he never thought would possibly be real, but things that were very much happening right now. He could barely breath, only whispering with a hoarse voice, "To stop Lucifer." The name of the Devil gave him a shiver when it left his tongue.

Castiel nodded, more firmly this time. "It's why we've arrived."

Dean had to shift his look farther away, catching some air before his lung exploded. He dampened his lips again, aiming for a casual tone just to hide his panic, hoping in vain that the angel couldn't hear his heart racing in his chest. He said sarcastically, "Well, bang-up job so far. Stellar work with the Witnesses. It's nice."

He leaned back on the edge of the kitchen sink, letting the cold tiles and metal calm the nerves on his lower back. He almost managed a wiggle of eyebrows even. He almost made the pretense convincing -- almost. There was no fooling for Castiel, however, who raised him, patched him, saw right through him -- but the angel was too busy defending himself from the accusation to point that out right now.

"We tried," Castiel said, glancing at Dean with a light annoyance. Who is this human to challenge his orders and Heaven's decision? He is the righteous man, and he personally saved him, but all those defiance and blasphemy was just far more annoying than necessary. Castiel had thought more than once that this task with his human as his assignment should have been easier than fighting in Hell, but apparently, with Dean, nothing would ever be easy.

Still, he told Dean, more patiently than he had ever been, "There are other battles. Other seals. Some we'll win, some we'll lose."

Dean shifted his eyes again, glancing at the ceiling as if he didn't care -- even just to annoy the angel more, but even he didn't know why he'd do such thing; Castiel had been on his side so far, he didn't have much luck with supernatural beings, but this angel seemed to be an exception. Good things do happen. Castiel said to him the first time they met. The good things, Dean thought to himself, does it include the angel standing before him, barely inches away? He shoot those lips another look.

"This one we lost." Castiel's tone turned more stern now. Dean couldn't help but scoffed again as his response -- just anything to make him look cool as cucumber, but with his heart beating like a frantic rabbit, it was getting increasingly difficult.

Castiel was not pleased by that contemptuous expression. He took the last two steps between them in one stride, leaning so close into Dean's personal space to press the words into the air. Quietly, lethally angry. "Our numbers are not unlimited," he scolded, as if blaming him for the death of his brothers and the casualty in his garrison, even though both of them knew it wasn't entirely fair.

Dean was cornered. It was just the space between the angel and the damned kitchen sink at Bobby's place, but he was cornered like a caged creature, with Castiel's face inches away.

Dean fluttered his eyes, staring down. The lips that he noticed earlier were the first things flicked into his eyes, and he found himself unable to take his gaze away from them ever again. They flipped and flapped like butterflies, like wings of celestial creatures, like flower petals with patterns of ancient tree barks, like angel feathers he caught only a glimpse at. He wondered boldly how they would taste like and was startled by the sudden thought that came from nowhere, improper and hazardous. He wished the angel wasn't reading his mind and hastily shoved the thought down, deep down.

Castiel's voice pulled his attention back to the topic, but his lips were not helping. "Six of my brothers died in the field this week. You think the armies of Heaven should just follow you around? There's a bigger picture here."

But you are following me around. Dean thought reflexively, but not daring to say it. Castiel could be so very intimidating, and, damnit, it was making him so incredibly hot.

Dean swallowed again, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. He could feel his insides cringing under the skin, trying to shrink smaller under the angel's gaze, but there was nowhere to hide. The angel was staring at him, eyes on his every single move, cornering him, caging him. Everywhere Dean looked, the space was occupied by the angel -- everywhere.

Castiel leaned in even closer, his lips ghosting inches away from Dean. His tone was murderous, deadly, but Dean's mind already fell blank. It was impossible to focus on the world-saving crisis in moments like this, when the angel was just so, so close. He tried to avert his eyes but failed utterly. His eyes broke free of his mind's control, only focusing on the parts that were the sole things that he could still see. Their skin could touch if his body just ever so slightly swung a degree forward.

The thought steamed Dean's brain, making his mind and eyes all dizzy and foggy, and hot.

Warm breath came out between those lips and huffed onto his skin as Castiel stretched out his sentence slowly, awe-strikingly, celestially, "You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in."

The angel didn't blink the slightest; his stare could quite literally burn a hole on Dean's face. He waited for the words to sink in.

Two inches. That was the distance between the angel's lips and his neck. There were barely two inches. That was all Dean could think about.

The last thread of reasoning in Dean's mind knew he wouldn't be able to give any decent answer that Castiel would be satisfied with, so he forced his tongue to stay still, and he forced his body to not swing or lean in even closer to close the last remaining distance between them, or do anything at all. That thin thread of reasoning was so sure that if he ever moved, he would do something unbelievably stupid and crazy and get himself smitten. So he held his breath and froze completely.

Dean didn't breathe until he realized the angel disappeared without saying goodbye. He blinked then. Slowly. As if his whole body was just slowly thawing.

Well, that hell of a speech might be the hottest threat he'd ever heard. He thought absently, replaying the view in his head over again, especially those eyes, that nose, that shadow and light on his face, and those lips. He's so damned.

The sun was gentle and warm for a November day. Kids were running and laughing in the playground. Dean looked at them, savoring the moment. The air beside him stirred with a light flutter of wings on the park bench. Dean didn't take his eyes away from the kids.

There would only be one angel approaching him and sitting quietly on a bench next to him like this, and he also felt like he could almost recognize that particular wing-fluttering sound now, just like he could recognize his Baby's engine purring without looking.

He took a breath before breaking the peaceful moment.

"Let me guess. You're here for the I-told-you-so," he said nonchalantly.

"No," Castiel answered simply. It was hard to hear what he was thinking -- but it was so clear that he was thinking a lot. He was thinking very loudly, but the human could not parse it.

"Well, good," said Dean, turning halfway to the angel, starting to look at him, "'cause I'm really not that interested." The light mood of seeing the kids playing in the park vaporized. The weight of what just happened -- almost happened -- to this town came crashing down again. The aftermath of the weight, to be more precise, it was like looking at a dusted room and staring at one particularly clean spot -- something used to be there but now removed, you just couldn't quite tell what it was from the shape it left behind. The ghost of a disaster lingered in the air -- but they couldn't figure out if the ghost would be better or worse than the disaster itself.

"I'm not here to judge you, Dean," the angel said quietly, frowning slightly, turning to look at Dean.

Dean realized he didn't know when but he's already turned to face him fully, and now his gaze was fixated on Castiel's eyes again, in a state he kept finding himself in lately. He frowned a little, forcing his brain to focus on the conversation instead of the view. "Then why are you here?" he asked.

"Our orders --" Castiel started, but immediately cut off by a fed-up Dean's words "I've had about enough of these 'orders' of yours --" He even shot the angel a challenging look with a raised eyebrow to pull a full set of irritated look.

But Castiel did not give up his speech easily. He continued as if undisturbed, staring Dean down. "Our orders," he gritted the word, grasping the human's attention like a clenched hand over his thoughts, dragging him back in, "were not to stop the summoning of Samhain. They were to do whatever you told us to do."

Dean blinked dumbfoundedly, confused. That can't be right. "Your orders were to follow my orders?" He was almost amused by the idea. Who was he to order two angels? To order a real angel like Castiel what to do? The mere thought of that alone felt wrong. He studied the angel's face intently, hoping to see a sign of mischief, that it was a joke -- not as if he had ever found one from the angel.

Castiel only nodded small. "It was a test," he told the human. "To see how you would respond under battlefield conditions, you might say." He thinned his lips, almost as if he was trying to express how much he was not particularly fond of the decision and the tests Heaven put Dean through. As if he was angry on Dean's behalf. Or empathetic. Dean watched those lips letting out the tiniest sigh, unsure of what exactly he saw there. Or why.

Dean wetted his dry lips, weighing the words that were thrown onto him. "It was a witch. Not the Tet Offensive." He aimed for a light tone and a casual shrug, as if saving the life of one thousand, two hundred and fourteen people in this town wasn't such a big deal. The joke was lame, even Dean knew, the moment it left his tongue.

But even Castiel allowed a small smile. Barely a facsimile of a smile, really, but the very first one closest to a smile that Dean's ever seen him. Dean found himself magnetized by it. His gaze hovered at the little curve at the tip of the angel's lips.

He was beautiful. Dean found himself thinking, and had to bite on his lower lip to pull back an instant impulse to mirror that smile and pull off a flirtatious comment. The angel would never approve or appreciate such blasphemy thoughts, Dean knew it -- he just knew. He ordered his mind to behave, before that train of thoughts could wreck somewhere.

Castiel didn't answer to that, merely staring at the grassland before them. Dean felt the obligation of filling the moment of the silence between them, as well as the space between the benches they sit on. It was no more than a foot, barely a step's distance, but it felt too far, like a gap in the universe he couldn't cross to reach the angel, like the difference between an angel and a human that would forever be there. It felt intolerable, and dangerous. So he pulled back that thread of thought too.

Dean swallowed, forcing more reasonable words to form and flow out of his throat. He took a short breath to smooth it. "So I failed your test, huh?" he started saying, thinking over what happened in the past two days, frowning deeper. A familiar feeling of failure and expectation of disappointment started sinking in his chest -- this is good, this is familiar. Dean thought. He always tried so, so hard to do everything right, to not fail, but so often, he would still screw up, he would fail his dad for one thing or another, he would fail his little brother -- and then there would always be some punishment. He seemed to always be a failure to someone, a disappointment to some big guy, so much that he was already feeling okay with it. It was just another failure in his long list of failed things.

"I get it. But you know what?" he paused briefly, considering his words, wetting his lips that became so quickly so dried again under the angel's eyes. Dean continued, slow but not hesitant, "If you were to wave that magic time-traveling wand of yours and we had to do it all over again? I'd make the same call." He gave Castiel a look that was saying "I do not regret what I did. That's who I am. So deal with it."

Let the angel call him stubborn; let the angel hate his ass and consider him not worthy of their effort; whatever. Dean decided, he did what he believed to be right, and he would never do anything any differently.

And surprisingly, the angel seemed to understand. Castiel nodded quietly, waiting for Dean to finish.

Dean was encouraged by the look on his face, the glistening lights in his eyes, and that ghosting hint of a smile still lingering at the corner of his lips. "'Cause I don't know what's gonna happen when these seals are broken. Hell, I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. But what I do know is that this here --" he gestured to the playground, the joyful kids and people, the bright sunshine above their heads, and the grass growing under their feet, the joy and beauty of the world came back to his attention. "-- these kids, the swings, the trees... All of it is still here because of my brother and me." He reasoned, but the angel wasn't the only one he tried to persuade. Did he really miss the "bigger picture" like the angels told him? Did he just make another mistake like all the other mistakes in their life, and condemned six billion human beings because he wasn't willing to sacrifice one thousand? Dean looked at the angel, wondering what Castiel really thought of his decision, more importantly, what he thought of him now.

Castiel turned fully to Dean, his face heavy with all the compassion and empathy. So extremely like the angels his mom told him about before bed when he was small, Dean thought. He reminded him of that little white angel figurine over the fireplace in his childhood house. It was there before he was born, watching over him with its kind eyes -- much like the real angel before him now. Dean wondered if that small statue was really made based on Castiel.

"You misunderstand me, Dean," Castiel said slowly, breaking Dean's wandering thoughts. His eyes returned Dean's gaze, holding him there, anchoring him. There was no disapproval or disappointment in those blue eyes, only understanding, with a sprinkle of pain. "I'm not like you think. I was praying that you would choose to save the town."

Dean was surprised. "You were?" That was something he didn't dare to have hope for, but Castiel surprised him nonetheless.

"These people, they are all my Father's creations. They are works of art." His gaze flashed to the people in park briefly before landing back on Dean. Including you, Dean, his eyes were saying quietly, you are the best of all those creations and the most beautiful works of art. The emotions stirred in those eyes like ripples in a lake, swirling darker.

Dean winced under those eyes, unsure of what he read, uneased by the look of appreciation and other things that were too kind to be real because he was damn sure he didn't deserve them. He lowered his eyes, drifting down to the angel's mouth. It was as dry and parched as all those other times he saw. Dean ran his tongue over his lips, as if it could wet the lips in his view.

Castiel was either not noticing or not thinking along the line, for he just continued, "And yet, even though you stopped Samhain, the seal was broken." His face hardened. "And we are one step closer to Hell on Earth for all creation. And that's not an expression, Dean. It's literal. You, of all people, should appreciate what that means."

Panic flickered through him like an electric wave of shock. Dean took a shallow breath, and felt his chest too tight to let that sigh out. If the Armageddon fell on Earth, couldn't say he wasn't warned. And he would know, with all the pain and consequence for all the eternity, it might just because of the mistake they made today, because he wouldn't let a town and a thousand people sacrifice for some greater good -- even knowing that, he still wouldn't.

He looked at the angel, thinking, asking silently, What should I do, Cas? For once, without saying it out loud, Dean thought, he was properly scared. Less scared than when he watched Sam die in his arms, more scared than when he was dragged to Hell by a Hellhound. How do I make the right choice? If you have the answer, please tell me.

And as if heard the voice in his mind, Castiel said, more quietly than before, frowning deeper than before, "Can I tell you something if you promise not to tell another soul?" His tone was so careful, so trusting, that Dean swallowed again around the lump in his throat, feeling as if he were to be tasked to hold the angel's heart with his bare hands.

"Okay," he forced his voice out, feeling his heart fluttered. Who was he to be trusted with an angel's secret that no other soul would ever know? Who was he to this angel, to Cas to be trusted like this? Dean thought, maybe he should be scared. But with everything happening recently, it was taking too much of his mental energy to really feel scared or worried so quickly again now.

"I'm not a 'hammer,' as you say," the angel confessed, his eyes averted, staring at his own clenched hands. "I have questions. I have doubts." He glanced at the sky, at Heaven's direction, and he looked away, as if he couldn't even bear to think about Heaven for too long at this moment, as if he was ashamed, as if he just admitted the biggest crime an angel could ever commit -- because it was, and Castiel knew it -- but Dean didn't.

Dean didn't, but he could sense something just from the way the angel hesitated and pained and averted his eyes from the sky. He could feel the undercurrent in those simple words, he just didn't know how significant it was.

Dean watched him intently, capturing every move of his eyes, every quiver of his lips. He didn't quite know the pain and uncertainty he witnessed, if they were the reflection of his or Castiel's. Perhaps both.

And the confession stretched on. "I don't know what is right and what is wrong anymore. Whether you passed or failed here." They shared another glance, then another stare. "But in the coming months you will have more decisions to make. I don't envy the weight that's on your shoulders, Dean. I truly don't."

Dean clenched his jaw at that, rendered breathless by the knowledge and burden in Castiel's eyes and voice. But at least I got you here with me, right? He thought, not daring to say that out. He felt too small and too big at the same time. They were talking about Apocalypse and Heaven and Hell and Angel and Demon here, and how could him, a vanilla human (okay, maybe adding a bit spice and juice) get to play on this big chessboard? Even just talking with angels, with Castiel, still made his stomach flutter.

Dean looked at the angel -- really looked at him -- thinking of the celestial being resided inside this vessel, behind the cloth and flesh, behind those lines and curves on his face, behind those eyes and lips, the being that could destroy him within a blink, the being that could summon lightening and thunder and spread his wings in a dimension different from their world. And yet, at the same time, Castiel was just sitting on a park bench with him, looking nothing different from a human, telling him, even as an angel, "he wasn't a hammer," telling him things that he wouldn't share with any other soul except for Dean. Not even to another angel -- especially not to another angel.

So here they were, on the park bench, under the sunshine of a November morning, staring at each other, long and quiet, both thinking dazedly: The person sitting with them was so unbelievable and They are going to be so screwed.

Dean frantically paced in the Beautiful Room, pissed and caged. The echo of their last fight lingered in his mind, sounding way too loud to his ears in this fancy angelic place that didn't have much sound except for his own footsteps. He shattered the little white angel statue to the floor just to hear the sound of cracking. And within a blink, it looked the exact same again, standing on the edge of the high-end marble display desk. Cas didn't appear this time.

What is so worth saving? I see nothing but pain here. I see inside you. I see your guilt, your anger, confusion.

There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it!

What would you have me do?

I do that, we'll all be hunted. We'll all be killed.

If there is anything worth dying for, this is it.

The look on Cas's face at that moment haunted him. Dean closed his eyes and still couldn't unsee it -- a moment of hope, a beat of silence, a flicker of understanding. Maybe Cas would help, he remembered thinking then. That deeply, deeply troubled look, the struggle, the pain, the torn-apart, the guilt, the apologies. But it wasn't enough. Dean wasn't enough. Not enough to move him or really reach him, not enough to be the reason he might need to change.

Dean let out a long sigh, pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. He'd die for his family and friends in a heartbeat, and he really thought they were that -- family and friends. Cas helped so much in the past year, Cas saved him from Hell, and it shouldn't mean nothing.

Yet still, here they were, parting on bad terms. It didn't matter that even Cas had said, "We've been through much together, you and I." Spending a year together saving the world didn't stand a chance against the brainwash of Heaven's lecture, it seemed.

Dean started pacing again. The disappointment and hurt receded slowly in the quietness and emptiness in the room. Memory came to him like rising waves. He remembered the time when Cas told him "Just so you understand why I can't help" with that wary look in his eyes when all he did was to help him, when Cas came back from the Bible Camp and saved them from demons, and the first sentence coming out of him was "I serve Heaven, I don't serve man, and I certainly don't serve you."

"What happened in the Bible Camp, really, Cas?" Dean murmured, staring at one of the wall paintings that had Michael slaying a big ugly dragon with long horns and tail, but he decidedly not looking into it too closely. Instead, he sent a quiet and desperate prayer. That's the only thing he was left to do in here anyway. "You helped me more than once -- Hell, you helped me every time, whenever I needed you. I was so sure you were my friend, Cas. I'm still trying to believe it. I don't have many of them, and most of them are dead. But please tell me I'm not wrong, that whatever's happening, I could at least still have you. I'm already losing Sam, don't make me lose you too."

The room was still too quiet, too static, too dead, too fake. Everything was too fake in here, the overbright gallery light, the arts, the paintings, the beer and burgers. Like the whole world was nothing more than a big delicate set for some big guy to enjoy the show -- maybe this really is what the universe is, who knows.

Dean turned around, standing at the edge of the table, staring at the food and drink basin but not really looking. Through his mind, in his prayer, he sent more than words now: he sent over the feelings and memories and images. The chilling thrill when he realized he was still alive, the joy of life after leaving Hell; the night when they met in the barn and he saw Cas's wings, the beauty of an angel that he was too frightened to believe it was true; the day they saved a town when the Destiny decided a different, more horrible fate for all the people and kids in there but they changed it, the first small smile on Cas's face, the exchange of words and confessions and secrets -- Cas's secrets that he never told another soul like he promised; when he couldn't stand to watch the demon kicking his ass, choking him down, and speaking angel exorcism, that's why he just had to pick up a crowbar and slammed it onto Alastair's head, even when the whole plan was to let angels and demons tear each other apart, he just couldn't bare to see Cas suffer like that; and so many times they looked into each other's eyes, when they shared a quiet comfortable moment, let the quiet understanding and alliance flow in the air without words. They were so bad at words anyway, but luckily, it seemed they didn't always need them -- except for now.

"Cas," Dean's lips quivered. He could barely hear his own words. He was getting teary. Desperate. He took a long breath in, trying vainly to steady himself. He tried again, "Cas, listen to me. I'm not mad at you, Hell, I'm more mad at myself most of the times. And I know I'm asking a lot, alright? I know. But I have to ask. You told me to have faith, and this is me having faith in you. You said to me 'Good things do happen', and you know what? I believe you, and I think that's you -- I couldn't remember most things happening between seventeen and twenty-nine, but I remember every single moment from this past year -- you were the best thing happened to me in my whole life, did I ever tell you that? And I think -- I hope -- I could just have that a little longer. Cas, you hear me? I need you. Please--"

He waited for two more seconds, holding his breath, listening to any wing-flapping sound in the air. But he heard nothing. The air was still. All he heard was the sound of his heart breaking. The very last thread of hope shattered. This was all he got, and now, he got nothing.

So this is it.

"Son of a bitch," Dean murmured, closing his eyes miserably.

He lost. He lost his bet, he lost his only friend, and they lost the world, everything. It was over.

He opened his eyes again, and the basin full of burgers and beers was the first thing came into view.

He sighed, long and defeated. What the Hell. He's gonna die any time now anyway. Might as well go with the swing.

Dean reached out to grab a paper-wrapped burger, ready to take a bite.

That was when he heard the sound of the wings again, disturbing the air behind him. Dean didn't even have enough time to turn his head when the hand on his shoulder abruptly spined him around and slammed his back into the nearest pillar.

Castiel cupped his hand over Dean's mouth, the other hand reaching into the trench coat to pull the demon knife.

Dean was panicked for a second. He was pinned motionless; the hands holding him in place were strong; the look on the angel's face was murderous. For a split second, Dean almost thought Cas was out of his mind and was gonna kill him right then and there. He tried to struggle under Castiel's hold, but then, their eyes locked. One look, and he calmed down.

Those eyes. So desperate, and unbelievably wide. And deep. And blue.

Cas's eyes were vigilant and steady, not blinking when he stared into Dean's eyes, all the way boring into his soul.

Dean didn't need words to hear him. Cas's eyes were saying, Are you ready? Do you trust me? This is me choosing you against Heaven. We're going to die. And I'm ready to die for you. Is this what you want?

One look, and Dean's heart ceased to beat, but then he nodded. Soundless, but certain, he nodded. I trust you. He answered with his eyes and thoughts. I trust you with my life and my brother's. I'm ready. Do it.

Cas released him, and Dean staggered two steps away from the wall quietly. Cas started drawing back his trench coat sleeve, cutting his own arm with the knife. The cut was so deep that it might drain half the blood in his body within minutes; blood gurgling out from the gash, and Cas didn't pay any attention, digging his fingers right in. He started drawing a huge angel banishing sigil on the closest wall. Dean watched him dipping two-knuckle deep into the cut to draw the sigil, wincing at the empathetic pain of knowing how much it must hurt to a human body. Blood streamed down to the floor, pooling rapidly into a puddle, but Cas didn't give a damn.

Dean swallowed and licked his lips. The end is right here, Dean thought to himself, they do this, they could all die tonight, and this might be the last time they see each other.

Dean drew his gaze all the way over Castiel, head to toe, top to bottom, from the crinkles between his eyebrows to the curve of his lips. He branded the image of the angel into his brain to remember at the moment of his inevitable, coming death -- one that he was so certain would fall on him, or them both.

Thank you. Dean thought, sending it through the prayer. He meant it.

Cas didn't slow his move, but Dean knew he heard him.

That was before Zachariah barged into the Beautiful Room and the end officially began.

Dean jumped when Cas's reflection popped into the mirror, barely inches away. His heartbeat raced like a frantic rabbit for a hot minute, and he could still feel his temples throbbing when he lashed out: "God! Don't do that!"

He thumped the sink.

The angel didn't seem to realize the problem, merely frowned slightly at his reflection, and answered with his patented greeting, flat with his deep voice: "Hello, Dean."

Dean pivoted from the place by the sink where he was cleaning the bloodstains on his favorite green jacket with a damped washcloth. And there he was, Cas -- the miraculously resurrected angel of Thursday, living for eons and not understanding a thing of delicate human social rules -- standing less than half a foot away from him. His lips less than three inches.

Dean couldn't help his eyes flickering downward, attracted by them incorrigibly. His brain put up a pretended war, forcing his eyes to move up, lingering on the angel's eyes instead. Those eyes were too hot to stare at in this distance. Dean could practically feel the heat from his body and the flow of air from his breath. It's too close. It's way too close.

Dean's eyes gave up the fight, moving down to the lips that were split with a small slit. Five o'clock stubble sprinkled across his lips.

Dean had to use all his brain power to tear his eyes away. He spoke, but the words coming out in a whisper as if he was incapable of talking any louder when the angel stood this close to him, afraid to disturb the air between them, between their lips specifically. "Cas, we've talked about this. Personal space?"

Cas narrowed his eyes in confusion for a split second, eyes searching the human's face. What an annoying race with all the complicating rules. But walking the Earth for little over a year, he did learn to pick up a thing or two on human emotions and facial expressions. And right now, he read "uneasy" on Dean's face, which was usually one step away from anger.

Cas took a step back quickly. "My apologies." He lowered his eyes, a habit of showing obedience after taking orders.

Dean threw him a quick glance, grabbed his jacket, and walked past the angel toward the bed, putting slightly more distance between them to hide the flutter in his lower stomach. "How did you find me? I thought I was flying below the angel radar." He gestured at his ribs to emphasize the point. He wouldn't ever forget the hilariously startled and confused looks on the faces of x-ray technicians and doctors. He'd find it humorous too if he wasn't the one being carved. Just how much imprints do Castiel have to leave on him? First with the handprint on his shoulder, then the rib carving. That's a possessive son of a bitch. He found himself thinking, then hastily amending, Not like he owned him. But that one, that particular thread of thought somewhat took a nosedive from unsettling to unbelievably erotic within merely a second. He swallowed the thought down.

"You are." Cas broke him out of his thoughts, and confirmed his point. Though it didn't make much difference. "Bobby told me where you were."

Traitor. Dean thought, huffing out a quiet laugh.

The angel didn't seem to notice, for he was busy scanning through the empty motel room, with one ruffled single bed and one duffle bag on the floor. No sign of the second brother.

"Where's Sam?" Cas asked with a serious, growing frown.

Oh yeah, the angel just knows how to make a casual conversation with an quote-unquote easy topic.

Dean really, really didn't want to have that discussion at this moment. He took a minute before answering, as nonchalantly as he could manage, stretching out the minute by moving some items out of his duffel bag to put some other things in, following the muscle memory of packing his bags. "Me and Sam are taking separate vacations for a while." He put on his jacket as if it was a layer of armor he could protect himself with. Cas observed him quietly from two steps away, not commenting.

"So." Dean pressed, eager to switch the topic. He sorted out the collar of the newly put-on jacket, turning to the angel, putting on a sharp, annoyed look as quickly as putting on the jacket. "Did you find God yet? More importantly, can I have my damn necklace back, please?"

He really was just looking for something to talk, but now he almost felt compelled to let the angel know how that necklace never left him ever since twelve when he put it on for the first time. He didn't know what get the better of him to agree giving Cas that amulet, maybe that was the tone Cas told him "I lost everything for you, for nothing," or the fierce but broken look in his eyes. He just couldn't refuse at that time. And now it was almost like his brain and his body were all itching to have it back at the first chance. He was not lying when he told Cas he felt naked without that, and it was all the angel's fault.

"No, I haven't found him." Cas answered matter-of-factly, tilting his chin mildly, meeting his eyes straight. "That's why I'm here. I need your help."

Dean busied himself with rolling his sleeves up so he wouldn't need to return the looks he knew Castiel was throwing at him. "With what? God hunt?" he murmured, semi-amused at the idea. "Not interested." It was easier to say no when he didn't have to meet Cas in the eyes, he learned his lesson by now.

The rejection made Cas turn his head away, staring at the disorganized interior of the motel room. "It's not God. It's someone else." Worry started growing inside him. He needed Dean, the angel realized, despite his pride. But the human didn't seem to realize how big of a deal this was, just like he wasn't aware the significance when he confessed he had doubts. Dean didn't change a bit since last year regarding how annoying and oblivious he could be, even if he might eventually agree on something, it would never be an easy persuasion.

Or, maybe it's just me. Castiel thought. I'm just an expendable and replaceable angel after all. And a fallen one now. That would explain why he and Heaven and the whole world never paid much attention whether I live or die or need anything. Which makes the case very sarcastic considering some higher force -- most likely God -- just seemed to put into some extra effort to bring me back. It had to mean something, right? I had to do something, make some meaning, with my life? Or was this all a mistake and I was just not supposed to live?

Cas's tone made Dean look up, fixing him with a more serious look. He paused a beat, knowing he'd regret asking but it was also so obvious Cas was in knee-deep trouble and truly, honestly, needed his help. Dean asked, "Who?"

"It's an Archangel," Cas told him, getting increasingly more worried as he spoke, taking steps to shorten the three steps' distance between them until he stood right before Dean again, forgetting all about the personal space thing. "The one who killed me."

Dean blinked.

Cas knew Dean didn't know the exact details of his death -- and he didn't intend to tell him. There was no need to bother him with details like that moment when the Archangel's light fell onto him, the moment he stood in the prophet's house facing that dawning light, knowing without doubt that he'd be annihilated without a cell from his vessel or a thread of light from his Grace left. It was so instant that there was no pain or fear. There was no goodbye, as well. His mind was on Dean at that moment, knowing he was doing the right thing, that they were saving the world, together and off-script; knowing he had seen Dean's face for the last time, and that there was no way he'd survive this, and he knew it before he made the move in the Green Room. He felt free at that very moment before his death, and a little fluttering joy in his heart, because of Dean. There were feelings he felt only for the first time, only before his death, only when his mind was lingering on Dean -- he didn't have time to really feel them or understand them before the death arrived. And he never could find them exactly the same again after he came back. He would never tell Dean any of it, of course. He never expected he'd come back and see Dean again, after all. And even as an angel, there were no precedential example to learn what he should do or feel after a resurrection, or after a fall, or how to handle or even just to explain those unnamed feelings and tightness and joy and sadness inside his chest when he met the human again, and knew they both survived. There was just no rule or order or tutor to learn about what to do, so Cas just learned from what he saw in Dean -- not talking about any of that. Better not talking about it, is practically the second highest unsaid rule on Winchester's books, so Cas was doing exactly that, burying everything deep, deep down.

Dean watched him intently from six inches away, arching his eyebrows. "Excuse me?" People don't usually talk about their killers so lightly -- well, people don't usually come back after they were killed and then talking about the ones killed them with a flat tone and a minor frown. They still didn't know how Cas came back -- not that Dean complained about that particular miracle though, he just wondered who they should send a card and flower bouquet to. He was thrilled to see Cas back, really, but he figured the angel might not be interested in his very human and very unimportant opinion and thoughts, so he didn't really say a thing.

The muscle on Cas's cheekbone twitched with a ghost of emotion -- not hatred, exactly, more like a mild disaffection and displeasure. "His name is Raphael," he told Dean.

Dean raised his amused eyebrows higher and lowered his voice, stifling a muted laugh, "You were wasted by a teenage mutant ninja angel?"

It must be one of Dean's usual culture reference that Castiel didn't have the patience to indulge or even just humor him with a look of confusion -- he knew how much Dean just enjoyed watching him tilt his head in confusion whenever Dean thought he came up with something clever and knew he wouldn't understand. For whatever reason, it seemed to give Dean some sense of joy or satisfaction. But today wasn't one of these days, the matter was too urgent, so Cas didn't indulge him today. Instead, he cut right back to the tricky problem by hand. "I've heard whispers that he's walking the earth. This is a rare opportunity."

Dean regarded him carefully, schooling his expression. "For what? Revenge?"

"Information," the angel corrected him flatly.

Dean huffed a small laugh, shifting his eyes away. "So you think if you find this dude, he's just gonna spill God's address?" He kept his tone light, and walked past Cas, went to pick up his knife and washcloth from the sink, having his back facing the angel.

It was like the most exhausting choreography, a constant dance around each other, like neither of them could bear stand still and look at the other for more than a minute.

Cas didn't turn around. "Yes," he said stoically. The plan was already there; he just needed Dean to help, to cooperate. And for once, he didn't want to trick or manipulate Dean into doing anything, like he did last year about some Heaven's order; he wanted Dean to really want to help him -- he needed him to.

Cas panned out the plan, "because we are gonna trap him and interrogate him."

Dean's fingers paused half-way cleaning his knife. He turned back to him. "You're serious about this." The light joking tone vanished from his voice.

Castiel turned around to face him, his face dead serious. His eyes were as steady and... deadly (which was just another term for suicidal in his case, in Dean's mind) as the day he pushed Dean to the wall of the Beautiful Room before cutting his arm open for the sigil. And Dean recognized it with a shiver through his spine.

"Yes," Cas pronounced simply.

Dean let go of the washcloth in his hand, stepping toward the angel slowly, with the freshly cleaned blade waving in his right hand. His gut felt all twisted and wrong, tangling together like a big sick chunk, Dean realized, but he didn't know why. It must be because of the way Cas stared at him right this moment, the same heated look when his eyes were asking: Do you trust me? I'm ready to die for you. Is this what you want? You ask, and I will die for you. And back then, Dean didn't have a second to pause and really think it over before answering with a nod, before realizing the meaning of his nod.

That day, he could have died -- he should have; Sam could have died; and Cas actually died, before all of them were magically brought back to life. He nodded at that time, telling Cas (without himself really knowing what he's asking, or rather, he did, but he didn't want to think about it too hard): Go, die for me. And this unbelievable angel did.

Dean forced his feet to move toward Cas, standing before him, frowning with disbelief. Is today a replay of that again? His mind asked. Are they going to die for some big bullshit cause again? And he didn't have to ask to know the answer. It was the same look, the same whirling shadow in his deep eyes, the same suicidal, sacrificial determination. Cas's blue eyes were so dark and harsh that they were almost black now, and the lines on his face were tightened. His lips thinned to a line.

Why is he just always so eager to die for any cause he determined? Dean thought, and the realization almost made him want to laugh at the sarcasm. Why is he so extremely like them, like the Winchesters?

Dean's eyes flickered across his face, searching his look, treading through his eyes to his lips, and he had to force out a laugh to release the weight on his chest before he was able to speak again. Dean heard himself saying, "So what, I'm Thelma and you're Louise, and we're just gonna hold hands and sail off this cliff together?" His mind decidedly not wandered to the fact that Thelma and Louise, if anything, was probably the most classic road movie with same-gender characters that were most definitely not having romantic feelings with one another. It was just a story with two people dying together at the end of a long and fucked trip -- exactly what they were, weren't they?

Cas just stared at him, frowning in aching confusion. Dean didn't know what he was waiting for exactly.

He shut his eyes for a long second and let out an exhausted exhale, walking away from the angel to put his knife into his half-sorted duffel bag. "Give me one good reason why I should do this." He chose to say instead, his back to Cas. It was not a rejection per say, but close enough. Just so he wouldn't have to watch -- or worse, assist -- the angel to willingly die for some random cause again.

Cas turned to him. "Because you're Michael's vessel and no angel will dare harm you," he answered dutifully. The strategic reason might be the easiest to pass for "one good reason" to persuade Dean, Cas reasoned quietly inside his head.

Dean was stiff for a second halfway putting the rest of his gears into his duffel bag. He looked at Cas, a flash of hurt flickering through his eyes. "Oh, so I'm your bullet shield," Dean managed, trying hard not to let disappointment seep through his forced smirking voice, but his eyes were already glistening without permission. He really didn't know what he was expecting to hear from Cas -- that he needed him? It wasn't like a freakin' angel would really need him for anything, was it? He was just happened to be Michael's vessel, so fucking handy and useful.

He decidedly tried to look away, to move away from the angel, to push down the bubbling pressure that was rising rapidly in his chest, and that was when he sensed from the periphery of his eyes that Cas took the last step's distance he placed between them and forced him to look at him in the eyes, talking right into his face, slowly, quietly, one word at a time, "I need your help, because you are the only one who will help me."

The darkened eyes were so blue again when they looked into Dean's. The eyes that could express all the human language without saying a word was giving the same irresistible power, saying its own speech: I have no one now, Dean. His eyes were visibly pleading, I lost everything for you. I couldn't go back to Heaven. I was hunted. I would be killed again. I need your help, because you are the only one I have. Without your help, I will lose, and I will die again. Please.

The angel's eyes were the sharpest blade made of broken glass, the color of glacier at the fringe of an avalanche, the shade of ocean in the eve of a storm. They were bright and dark, they were desperate and hopeful, they were bleeding and hurt, so pained and broken, yet they bored into his soul like sprouts and vines growing from the dark and reaching desperately to a hint of sunshine through a crack. Cas looked at him, as if he, a mere human with no power but only a broken, traumatized past, was the sunshine, was the sole hope and faith of an angel. Dean found himself petrified by those eyes, captured by the depth and emotions in them. He was breathless under the stare. He would do anything for him just so the bleeding pain in those eyes could stop breaking his heart.

"Please," Cas finished, voice heavier than any time before.

Dean swallowed, feeling all the way from his lips to his throat were as dry as desert. He ran his tongue over his lips.

"All right, fine," he softened, eyes lingering on the angel's lips, waiting to see the curve lifting slightly at the good news.

Cas nodded appreciatively in relief, his stressed shoulders relaxed the tiniest. His eyes conveyed a quiet "Thank you" without his lips moving an inch. The curve did pull up a degree.

Dean smiled fleetingly. He wished he didn't just make the wrong choice to lead both of them back into some death trap, or make the angel a little bit more broken again.

I don't want him to get hurt again, Dean had to tell himself. And going with Cas, by dutifully taking up his damned role as the freakin' archangel's vessel that he didn't want anything to do about, taking its only perk to become Cas's bullet shield, protecting Cas for once -- this, seemed to be the only right thing to do. Just, being a weapon, like he always was, and always will be. And nothing more.

The smile was long gone by the time they headed out.

Castiel's expression had been murderous ever since they found out what plan Dean had in his mind, ever since he dumped them and ran away outside Blue Earth, Minnesota.

Sam was the one figured out his farewell trip, and Cas was the one zapped him back to Bobby's place. The taped paper box with his farewell letter left forgotten in Cicero, Indiana, so was Baby. But they didn't have time to worry about that. Not now.

Everyone in the house glared at Dean like he was the Devil that was about to destroy the world. Dean tried to force a pretended lightness by some half-hearted jokes, but they did zero help saving him from the glares and glowers.

He whined loudly when they threw him into Bobby's panic room, the very place he locked Sam up for his demon blood detox. Guess you never know whose turn it was.

Dean was pacing in the tiny space when the metal door clanked open again, Sam standing at the door, looking utterly pissed. And Cas stood three steps away outside the door, glaring at Dean like his eyes could literally burst into flames with divine wrath, torching him alive.

Dean never saw him like that before -- the look in Castiel's eyes were intense enough to prickle the hairs on his neck, but somehow, he was feeling bold to poke the bear. He was gonna die sooner or later anyway, how bad it could be to upset Cas more than he already did? He poked Bobby ten minutes ago, knowing full well how hurt his words could be, and Sam could just be the next. It became his life's goal to irritate everyone enough to make them hate him enough to not care when he died. Sounds like a plan, right?

Dean met Cas's eyes with a pretentious playfulness of his own, lighter than he had been in probably ten years. Cas held the gaze, staring him down.

Dean put on a flirtatious smirk. "Well, Cas, not for nothing, but the last person who looked at me like that..." he gave it a meaningful pause, chewing the words before letting them slip out of his tongue smoothly, his heart fluttered in his chest, too full and too hollow at the same time. "I got laid." He even topped it with a histrionic wink to complete the set.

There, he did it. Making their bond shallow, making it sound like a one-night-stand, making their long tacit staring meaningless. Dean decidedly ignored the clenched heaviness and breathlessness in his chest. An ache that felt too damn close to a heart attack. There was really not anything between them, wasn't there? He couldn't possibly break something that wasn't there, could he?

The looks in Cas's eyes were a combination of ultimate fury and hurt. Dean wondered if the second part was just his hallucination.

Even from ten steps away, Dean could see all the muscles on Castiel's body tightened, he was like a predator at the exact moment before swooping down on his pray, but also, somehow, like a homeless wet puppy in a rainy day getting kicked in the belly. The angel's fists clenched and flexed, itching to punch and kill. Dean knew, right then and there, Cas would tear anything down to pieces if he wasn't trying so desperately to hold himself back, not doing them any physical harm -- and more importantly, that target would have been him, if he wasn't already locked in a cage. For a brief moment, he found himself wondering if this lockdown was actually doing him a favor.

He watched the lines and furrow on Cas's face crimpled in desperation and frustration as the moment between them stretched on. He wondered if all of that came from that single flirtatious joke that he found just too easy to let out. He was acting as a world-class asshole today anyway, might as well put on the act till the end, shooting everyone right to the heart with everything he knew would sting the most. The angel rolled his eyes fiercely when he choked him with a vicious "Blow me, Cas" just earlier. Dean wondered if it was taken literally back then -- not that he'd complain if it was, if that being his last fun moment before lights out.

Dean blinked to himself at this new realization, half amused -- he'd probably be full-on stressed out if the situation was any different and if he could spare any more reasonable thoughts for the angel and his turbulent feelings and everything else outside his suicidal plan. But right now, somehow, he didn't feel too bad. What's the saying? Death could feel like freedom? Yeah, this might be it.

Castiel glared at the unbelievable human in the panic room without getting any closer to him than ten steps' range, afraid he might get too furious that his grace might accidentally burst into flame and burn his eyes out. If he wasn't trying his best to control that anger burning in his chest, it might actually happen.

Dean had never lowered their shared moments and bond to anything as meaningless and purely physical as he was doing now. They were almost like having a silent, unspeakable agreement on whatever it was between them -- as little as Castiel knew about human interaction and all the nuance in their expressions, even less when it came to Dean, but this, this unsaid silent agreement between them when he stared into Dean's soul and the human stared back into his vessel as if he could actually really see the real him, the real angel Castiel residing inside this vessel. This felt like something different, something special and meaningful, because, even though Dean didn't know it, they had a profound bond just from the Hell rescue mission after all -- and now Dean was breaking it, cheapening it, throwing it to the ground and stomping on it. Castiel found the flame of fury burn so much worse in this body of his that he forgot how to breathe. Air caught short in his vessel's chest, and he had to remember to breathe violently to ease the tight sensation there. The aching around where his vessel's heart was beating felt very physical and real. For once, he felt as if this vessel was really his own body, and breathing hurt as if he was a flesh-and-bone human -- maybe it had something to do with his reducing grace as well. He felt pained and weak and hurt like never before -- and it made him even angrier, both at himself and at Dean.

It wasn't his first time witnessing the suicidal side of Dean, but this time it seemed to have gone far worse than any other times, Castiel observed, forcing his head to work around the fact that Dean might deliberately try to infuriate him. He was even more frustrated to find that it was working. He didn't even understand how or why, just a sense of betrayal, a sense of hurt, like something is quietly breaking apart inside him. And as an angel -- even a fallen one -- he really, really shouldn't be feeling these.

He felt more human than he ever was, even more than the moment he was cast out from Heaven, more than when he felt his power escaping him and not growing back. He felt vulnerable and bare, just from that single one comment of Dean's -- and he felt confused how was that even possible.

Sam was the one giving him an out, telling him to check on Adam instead.

Castiel was more than eager to leave this unbelievable human right this moment. He couldn't really hold himself back any longer before he burst out to do something far worse than he's ever done to him.

Castiel gave Dean one more glare of death before slamming the door closed with a flick of fingers and stormed upstairs. Dean Winchester was the most unbelievable, unbearable, irritating human being in the whole world.

He tried his best not to think about why exactly everything was hurting so much, then -- that was a lesson he learned from the Winchesters. You don't think about things like "feelings", you ignore them. That's the only way one get to handle them WHILE handling a world-ending event like Apocalypse. They don't have either time or luxury to ponder their needs or what they want. Not when people are dying -- when Dean is dying.

So Castiel tried to do exactly that. Focus on the task. Focus on "more important" things.

Though not very successfully.

The last person who looked at me like that... I got laid.

The angel had to tell himself, over and over, This means nothing. Dean was just being... an assbutt. There was nothing between them, and he meant nothing to the humans anything other than a useful angelic tool, a hammer, a helper. So, stop thinking about it.

He swallowed down the bitterness, still couldn't quite convince himself. But he couldn't convince himself the other way either -- the way he thought they were, the way he hoped they were. So he just got more and more confused, and angry, and feeling his chest once again too tight and heavy to breathe.

Castiel couldn't help himself from coming back down to the stairs leading to the panic room about an hour later, after Sam had given up reasoning with his obstinate brother. Cas thought just maybe he could give it another try, or at the very least, checking on how Dean was doing.

He heard something breaking just as he treaded down the dark passageway.

It sounded like a broken vase, or a crashing furniture. Or a fallen body.

"Dean?" Cas's heart clenched. He accelerated his steps. An unreasonably unsettling worry and fear for the worst grabbed his gut tightly.

The place sounded awfully quiet when he reached the door.

The view behind the thin slit of the barred peephole was even more perturbing. A tipped-over chair and a broken vase on the floor seemed to just prove all his worst nightmare.

They were trying so hard to keep Dean alive, but if that stupid, stubborn human being really put his mind to it, there were still so many ways he could harm himself or even kill himself. A rope, a piece of broken glass, a hidden blade they didn't find to take away, name his pick.

Please tell me you aren't this stupid. Please not that. Don't you dare...

Castiel didn't realize his mind started praying, his hands not as stable as they normally were when he fumbled for the handle. They would have been trembling violently if he wasn't using his grace to force them steady enough to unlock the bars.

"Dean!"

His breath was caught and his heart pounded hard in a way he never knew it could when he stepped in.

The room looked utterly empty and messed up, just like he feared. Blood pounded through his veins so loudly that he could barely hear his own thoughts.

Dean, what have you done?

Cas scanned around the room in a rush, his heart so worried that it was very literally hanging under his throat. It slowed down his reaction to notice the movement behind him.

That was exactly when Dean stepped out from the shadow and called his name. His voice was calm and steady.

Cas swiveled toward him with a huge relief. But the next thing he knew, Dean's bloody palm was pressed to the large angel banishing sigil on the opposite cabinet door, triggering the spell.

The light from the sigil brightened up like a burning star and tore the angel from his current existence. Cas realized in that split second that he had never mentioned to the humans -- Dean, in particular -- that, being blast away by the sigil was as painful to angels as being shot by a torpedo in the chest and pushed by it until landed a thousand yards away as a bird.

That was why every time they used the sigil, the angels under the effect would have to take quite some time to catch their breath from disorientation and any potential hurt before flying back. And if they were already wounded or weak, the sigil and the impact of collision might potentially cause them permanent harm, or even death.

But Dean didn't know any of that.

And the beam from the sigil started pouring on him. Cas felt his wings got torn out forcefully from behind his back, stretched to their limits, almost like tearing them away from his true form alive. Castiel screamed as he was blown away.

He was thrown ruthlessly into the dirt, bashing a muddy hole on the ground of some forest. The leaves had helped the eventual landing, but his body and grace both ached tremendously. His wings shivered behind him as he tried to push himself up from the earth. His shoulders were twisted in the wrong way, because he hit a rock, and his leg was bleeding.

Cas staggered, and closed his eyes, forcing the already rapidly draining grace to spare a precious drop -- that he had been saving in case they had to go into a fight with angels or he needed to use it to heal Dean -- to repair the vessel and stop the distracting pain. His head buzzed with noise that was probably also a side effect of a very physical concussion as he tried to tune into the angel radio.

His body was still hurting, his head was still throbbing with dull pain, but he didn't have time for them. He already wasted a second or two to catch his breath from the crash, to drag himself up, to locate Dean from the sea of signals that he was picking up through the prayers and longings. He didn't know if he had taken too long, if Dean had already done something irreparably stupid. Fear and rage tightened his muscle and mind.

He sensed a flicker of thought that sounded distantly like Dean's through the angel radio, a quiet, pained thought, I'm sorry. But he couldn't be sure.

Another prayer in its vicinity was much louder, much clearer, murmuring Dean's name on his tongue. But he had no right to. Just a preacher pretending to be God's servant, but actually doing angels' dirty work.

Fury flared inside Cas, making the pain in his wings so much easier to ignore.

The prayer's voice echoed loudly in his head as he tuned in: "Dear God." You're Dean Winchester, the one they told me about, the one chosen by our Father, our savior on Earth.

Castiel flapped his wounded wings, flying through the ether that connected the land and filled in between the dimensions. He navigated through it like fish in the sea -- or bird in the sky, as a better metaphor.

"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name --"

Castiel locked in on his location, and landed in the alley before the man could finish the first sentence of his over-formally but otherwise useless prayer. He wished no other angel had received or noticed that prayer but him, and relieved for a small second that it seemed his wish was granted. It was only him and Dean in the alley.

The flame of fury burned more heated in his chest at the sight of Dean, who looked almost dazed at his sudden appearance.

"You pray too loud."

Castiel put the preacher to sleep just like he did to Bobby when he first met Dean. Dean barely had time to turn to him and gasp before he was snatched by the collar and steered into the dark back alley.

Dean's steps stumbled by the angel's push. And he didn't even have time to protest when Castiel shoved him to the dirty brick wall.

Fury turned into rage, then frenzy, then frantic wrath. Cas's fist punched into Dean's cheek mercilessly, knocking him over. Blood streamed down from his broken nose in an instant.

Dean groaned, choking out, "What, are you crazy?" But he was no match to an angel, let alone an outrageous one. He didn't even bother to block the hit -- not that would be of any help anyway.

Castiel hauled him up by the collar, growling into his face. "I rebelled for this?! So that you could surrender to them?"

The punches made his ears buzzing, and Dean smelled blood. The image of Castiel's face flashed before his eyes so quickly that his mind was having trouble catching up with the words he was hearing. Only that Castiel was very, very pissed. So pissed that it looked like, without a doubt, Cas could kill him just by beating him hard enough.

The realization made Dean flinch. He'd never think he'd be killed by Cas, not after he started knowing him -- got his ass kicked by an angel, quite likely, but not by Cas.

"Cas! Please!" Dean yelled, out of survival instinct.

But the beating didn't stop. Two more punches landed. And Dean could taste the sweet metal taste on his tongue, more blood dripping from the corner of his lips. His nose must be broken, his eyes had trouble opening, and his head buzzed with pain. The pain somehow cleared his mind a little, helped Dean focus a little more on the angel's face.

Castiel dragged him by the arms, knocking his back to the other side of the wall. Dean heard the bones on his back cracking from the impact. The angel was incredibly strong, and undoubtedly not really caring if any of it would hurt him for real -- or maybe, that was exactly his intention. Maybe after that banishing spell Dean sent his way, Cas finally decided to stand back on Heaven's side, punishing Dean for everything he's done to him, for everything Cas lost because of Dean.

Dean's hands were trapped between their bodies, couldn't quite be useful to push Cas away, or protect himself from another blow. So instead, they clutched around the angel's trench coat, pulling himself closer to the angel. The sensation of the familiar fabric grounded him. He was intimidated, but not entirely scared -- it felt right: if he had to die, what's the better way to die in the hand of his friend, in the hand of the angel who saved him from Hell? It felt right, and perfect, and Destiny. Dean stopped fighting, just looking at him now, waiting for the inevitable to happen.

"I gave everything for you! And this is what you give to me?!" Cas roared at him, his face merely three inches away. More pure fury glowed from his eyes like his angel grace was radiating.

Dean was dazed, and pressed to the wall motionless. So funny that this seemed to become a familiar posture between them, almost exactly like last year before Cas's death, before Cas lost everything and got cast out of Heaven, all because of him. So he really had every right to be white-hot furious. And Dean deserved every punch, every punishment, and eventually, the end of his life. Karma is a bitch, but the bitch sometimes is right.

Dean stared at him in the eyes, the speed of the physical world seemed to slow down as his mind got distracted. Cas was so full of rightful rage, finally looking like a full-on biblical righteous angel, but also so pained, so torn-apart, so desperate, so very very human.

Cas sacrificed everything for him. Dean's mind thought slowly, watching his eyes roll, his eyebrows raised, his nostrils flare, his lips purse. Dean stared at those lips as they move, as they curse him, as he yelled his frustration. There were only three inches between those lips and his, maybe even less.

This is the angel who saved me from Hell and fell from Heaven because of me. And now I disappointed him. I made his pain worthless. Because I am weak, because that's what I do, I hurt him.

I don't deserve him.

Dean fell silent, giving up on resisting completely.

The next punch sent him flying and crashing on the metal net at the end of the alley, and the kick that followed hit him on the chest.

Dean crashed to the ground, crawling on his all fours. Everywhere in his body hurt, some bones must be broken, his ribs too, most likely. He could feel his cheeks and his lips wet. He looked up, and Cas was standing two steps away from him, fist clenched tight.

He could so easily kill me. Dean's thought drifted. He might as well do it, saving all of them the trouble of worrying about my surrender. Saving me the trouble of doing it myself.

"Do it!" Dean choked around the mouthful of blood, watching the angel from ground, from below. He felt small, and the angel stood tall -- just like he should be, just like any angel always should be -- standing tall and high and above the cloud, and beautiful, and undisturbed and undistained by the dirt on Earth.

"Just do it!" Kill me.

Maybe that could make Cas's sacrifice mean something. Maybe that was all they needed, as a solution. Death by his best friend's hand, it didn't sound as bad as making a decision so wrong that it would curse the whole world and his brother and likely also kill the said friend again, right?

And if anyone had the right to take his life, it would be Cas. His mom and dad gave him this life, and Castiel saved his life -- it felt right that Cas would be the one to take it back.

Dean watched him, and almost smiled. It felt right to die like this, by Cas's hands. Not as glorious as Butch and Sundance like he usually imagined it to be, but it felt right this way.

But the expected killing blow didn't come.

Cas held his eyes, and eventually, slowly, unclenched his fist, letting out a defeated sigh. How could I? His mind answered Dean's unsaid thoughts, all too loud and clear to read. I saved your life, how could I do you any harm? How could you even think that I'd do you any real harm, let alone take your life? Or maybe, in your eyes, I am just like any other ruthless, heartless angel who knew nothing but killing and following orders? Is that how you see me? After all these times, after I died for you?

But it doesn't matter now -- not really. It doesn't really matter how Dean saw him. It doesn't matter when they have bigger fish to fry -- and they always have other priority tasks than pondering those indecipherable things and thoughts.

Cas touched Dean on the shoulder to knock him out instead, and watched his bloodied face for a long minute before healing him -- most of the wounds, anyway, but not all, so he wouldn't drain all his limited power.

He shouldn't lash out like this. Cas bit his lower lip during the healing, silently hating himself. He didn't sacrifice because he wanted anything back. It wasn't fair to pressure Dean into thinking about him when they already had so much to worry about.

Cas sighed again. If only Dean could see it, all he ever wanted is the Winchester boys safe, and alive, and happy, and then, if they can, do their best to save the world. Why can't Dean just prioritize himself for one bloody second, instead of always so willing to jump into the fire?

But after all, who was he to demand how Dean live his life, or choose to use up his life? He was nothing more than an acquaintance broken angel who happened to be tasked to save the Righteous Man from Hell and watch over him. He couldn't even save himself -- he did a poor job following orders, he broke Heaven's single most sacred rule and rebelled, he grew human feelings and wills that he had no experience with or control over. His own existence was just as confusing as the Winchesters', who was he to decide what was the right way?

He pressed his fingers on Dean's forehead, tracing the furrowed lines between his eyebrows, smoothening the frown that was still there when Dean was unconscious.

The back alley was quiet without the sound of fighting and pleading. There was no human around. The moon shined on Dean Winchester's sleeping face. It almost felt like one of those peaceful nights where he stood in the corner of the room, watching him sleep. It felt almost... intimate, only belonged to them.

He wasn't the one getting kicked and punched, but he felt his heart was aching and his bones tired all the same.

Castiel took longer than necessary to stare at Dean's wounded face, thinking, debating, swallowing, deep-breathing, before finally flying the two of them back to Bobby's place.

It all happened too fast. Dean didn't even register the danger before the death could have grasped him -- or in this case, it was Fate.

The lighter caught fire the moment they opened the warehouse door leading to the gas outlets. Flame and explosion filled the space in an instant, fire and heat lunged toward their face. And then, before he could blink, he wasn't there anymore.

The daytime sky became night now, trees grew sparsely around them, the air felt chilly.

A low voice that was way too familiar greeted them from behind them: "Hello, Dean. Sam."

"Cas!" Dean spined around before he even steadied his footing, too glad to see his angel friend now. It was a close call, and very certainly, a personal gift from Fate herself.

Sam was obviously thinking the same, still reliving that horrifying moment.

If Cas was one second too slow, it would be too late, they'd already been fried extra crispy and started living their lives happily ever after in the piece of junk place called Heaven.

"Hey, thanks man." Sam eased his breath, glancing around. "Where are we?"

"White Russia," Cas answered, still too alarmed, too vigilant, too uneasy, as if it wasn't far enough to protect them from being heard or followed by Fate. After all, they were dealing with Fate this time, literally.

Dean glanced around them too, lowering his voice, moving closer to the angel. "Are you aware of what your frat bro did?"

He didn't have to name Balthazar's name to make this a perfectly understandable question.

"I'm aware," Cas answered. Not just aware, he was on his full commission, actually. But he couldn't say it. It didn't feel right. He would tell them everything later, eventually, when the time was right.

"Balthazar can be impetuous," he said instead. And this wasn't entirely a lie. Nor was the one before that. He was just... missing out some certain small details -- for good reasons: to keep them safe.

Dean didn't notice the pause, pressing on the second and more worrying question in his head: Why'd Fate try to kill them. Like he pointed out, they weren't on the Titanic.

Which was also what Cas thought, before this small operation was orchestrated.

But it became an easy answer now that it was thrown into their face.

Who could Fate hate more than the exact humans that disturbed the track of the history that Fate and Destiny and God had decided millions of years ago? Let alone going back and forth across the Veil far too many times than any celestial beings would be pleased about.

"I imagine she harbors a certain degree of rage toward you," Cas answered carefully. Far more than just "a certain degree of rage" actually, but just wish the Winchesters could understand.

And Sam Winchester had to ask, innocently, "What did we do?"

Cas huffed out a short humorless laugh, tilting his head meaningfully. His sarcasm was perfected over the years, especially by watching and learning from the Winchesters. "Nothing of import --" he said in a pretense of a casual tone, giving them both a look, lingering his eyes on Dean longer. "-- just the tiny matter of averting the Apocalypse and rendering her obsolete. I think maybe she's a little irritated about that."

Yeah, just a little irritated.

Dean raised his eyebrows, hearing the biting tone in his voice. Wow, his brain exclaimed, that's a side of Cas he didn't usually get to see. Which happened to be a side that was far too hot and right to his liking. Sassy, and hot. Dean blinked and swallowed, willing his mind to come back on track. He started to feel his lips drying quickly already.

Cas continued without noticing, "And then you go and dangle yourselves in front of her..." Like the way you are, just couldn't rest for a split second, just had to trudge right into the dirty water. Why is he even surprised?

Dean rolled his eyes, almost as if proud of himself, "So we've pissed Fate off personally."

Cas could already hear the "Awesome" right on the tip of his tongue, like they haven't realized how big of a matter it was. So he had to emphasize it just a little more.

He squinted at the brothers, glancing between them, but looking at Dean longer, more warningly. "If I know her -- and I do -- she won't stop until you're dead." So just telling the boys to be careful wouldn't help the slightest. And it pained him so much to think that, just because of the angel civil war up there, and because of that tactic he and Balthazar pulled, and now it's Sam and Dean who were paying the price. Especially Dean. It's all his fault. Castiel grimaced, shifting uncomfortably.

"Awesome," Dean blurted out, watching Cas with eyes full of curious wonder and light hope, as if the angel had all the answers to the world. "So what do we do?"

"Kill her," Cas answered simply. That seemed to be the only neat solution, after all. He couldn't protect them all the time (to keep them safe), and he couldn't lose the war (also to keep them safe). Then this seemed to be the only thing they could do.

So many times recently that his choices became so limited. Cas thought, and decided he didn't like it.

And even worse, he was forced to get used to so many more violent and bloody solutions that, he might had to get used to it. Cas hated it for himself, but this was the only way. So he had to do it. For Dean. For all of them.

"Kill Fate?" Sam gasped quietly.

"Do you have another suggestion?" Cas challenged.

Sam stuttered, "No, I'm -- I just mean... can you even do that?"

And luckily, that was a question that he already had answer for. Their last resort, already discussed before the action, just in case things went bad, because things always went bad.

"Balthazar has a weapon that will work against her," Cas told them.

"Of course he does," Dean almost looked amused, cutting him off quickly. But a beat later, Cas recognized the familiar sour sarcastic tone. A very displeased, unhappy tone. "Yeah, that guy's just got it covered, doesn't he? You need new friends, Cas."

He stared at the angel, especially hard when he spoke the words "new friends."

Cas returned the gaze just as intensely. "I'm trying to save the ones I have, Dean."

You're my only friend, and everything I'm doing is to save you. Cas's mind supplied, but the reasonable part, the tactical strategist part of him weighed the words and blocked them from leashing out. Dean doesn't need to know everything. If he went any deeper, Dean would query, and ask why, and how, and keep digging and chasing, and eventually he would have to admit things that even he didn't quite understand. Especially those... other feelings, the ones that made him stare at Dean's back for long hours when he was just sweeping the leaves in the backyard, in a house where he lived with a woman and a kid. He felt his heart aching in a way he couldn't understand no matter how hard he pondered, but he knew already, that Dean wouldn't like it if he said too much, if he stepped out of the line. It wasn't his position to trouble Dean with his thoughts and feelings. So he kept his mouth shut, and let the word "friend" filling the gap between them.

Their stares stretched longer in silence. Cas didn't need to blink, and Dean looked like he couldn't even breathe. His Adam's Apple bobbed up and down, and his eyelashes fluttered when he glanced down, searching Cas's face, lingering on his lips before forcing himself to look up.

Friend.

They both tasted the words, hearing it echoing in the empty air. That's what they are. They're friends.

Cas tried very hard to remind himself that.

And Dean, too.

Sam made a small sound by shifting his feet on the grass.

Cas pulled his gaze away. "We'll have to draw her out."

He disliked the idea, again. For having to use Dean -- and Sam -- as baits to tempt Fate. But it had to be done, for all of their safeties, which means he'd have to watch the brothers' every step from now on, for every single second. The saying went "Fate strikes when you least expect it," well, good thing is, they were expecting it now.

Castiel was never more tense when he watched the boys walk down the street, sniffed by the wolf-like dogs, almost bumped by every single pedestrian, walked past the flying torches, and onto the street with all the construction works. He didn't breathe, he didn't blink, he didn't glance back or look away. He couldn't. Dean and Sam's lives relied on his watch, and he'd do just that, watching them like it was the end of the world -- because to him, it was.

He couldn't lose them. He just couldn't allow that happen no matter what.

And he did it again, saving their lives at the last second before Fate struck. Castiel let out a pleased and relieved breath. He saved them again, just like the very first job he was given regarding Dean: Save him. He just had to keep saving him. It was the only thing mattered in the whole universe.

It wasn't easy. The truth was, it was damn hard, to hide something from Dean.

And it seemed, Crowley knew exactly what had been torturing him since the beginning and never gave up making the most use of it, taunting him contantly.

Cas found himself keep flying away from Crowley's lab, away from Heaven's war, just away from all those things, all those jobs and responsibilities and everything that dragged him exhausted. He went to sit in the Impala with Dean, instead, if only just to exchange a sentence or two, just to see the man, and that would already make him feel so much better. But he pointedly chose not to think how much worse it felt immediately when he realized he'd have to lie again, to Dean's face.

If he could, he would never do this again.

And if he did, he'd never end up trapped inside a holy fire circle, with Dean being the one standing on the other side, staring him down.

The fire heated the air quickly, distorting the view when they looked at each other. The heat came close to his skin. It could actually kill him. Cas realized with an actual flabbergastation. This is the first time that Dean actually threatened him with something that could actually hurt him and kill him.

He knew Dean would probably be pissed when or if he found out, but he didn't know Dean would be so angry that he might threaten to kill him with Holy fire. But after all, he had it coming. He might just deserve it for how much he hurt him, and it didn't seem to matter that he was just trying to protect him -- not like he could admit the very deep-down reason why he did it all, after all.

Cas's eyes swept around the room, unsettled. Panicked, if he had to admit. He wasn't ready to admit the truths -- not the deal with Crowley, not all the other things he buried down, not the way he looked at Dean, not the reason why he made the deal in the first place -- eventually, probably, but not now. He didn't think it would come so quickly.

"Let me go!" Cas said, eying the fire consciously, turning to them one by one. In every direction, the fire licked dangerously close, threatening to burn his clothes, then his flesh, then his grace and his true form and his wings. Dean could just be standing there, watching his wings torched to the ground, becoming a burned mark like when all these other angels died. Would Dean feel sorry for him then? After his death? Cas wondered. Or maybe just too angry to care, just standing there watching, especially after he found out his deal with Crowley?

Cas looked down, bitter at the thought. The fire dyed everything in the room red, almost like blood. It was too dangerously distracting to think about anything when he had to be conscious about keeping all his wings inside the circle even in the ethereal plane. But he was still distracted, thinking about the Dean in his memory and the Dean standing before him, nonetheless.

"We gotta talk," Dean said, slowly, cautiously, standing up from his sitting position, moving closer to him. There was only the fire between them now, a blockage that he could never across without being killed.

Dean's eyes were careful, constrained, guarded, looking at the angel like approaching a caged dangerous creature, like... approaching someone he didn't know, and powerful, and dangerous.

Cas read his eyes, and pained immediately. Dean never looked at him with eyes like these. Never as enemy, not since the first day, not ever.

"About what? Let me go!" Cas tried again. But deep down, slowly, definitely, he knew it was over. One way or another, Dean would find out everything, and there would be no going back. They were friends, and he was contented as being nothing more than a friend, but now, nothing. He'd be nothing at all, or worse, enemy. Dean was trapping him and cornering him like he would to a demon, an archangel, the Devil. He had made himself their enemy. Cas found his chest tightened with the aching sensation that was growing very consistently over the years. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't feel his vessel's heart beating, he couldn't feel the life in him at this moment.

Under Dean's guarded and alarmed look, Cas felt, he was dying a little every single second. He was being killed by the pain inside his own heart, and inside Dean's eyes. Ashes from the aching piling up his chest, blocking his breath. He wondered if the ash was just his imagination or actually his wings were already burning with the Holy fire for him being not careful enough, for hoping to stand closer to the edge of the Holy fire ring, to be closer to Dean.

But it didn't help reducing any trace of hurt or alarm from Dean's eyes.

The proofs were clear, and abundant. Truth was, he wasn't being as careful as he thought he was. The slipped line of Kryptonite, burning the wrong bones, the demon place being too clean. There were too many evidences, but they didn't know for sure, not yet. He might still have a chance walking out of here as their friend.

"It was hard to understand. It's hard to explain." Cas wasn't lying when he tried that. It wasn't enough. It was far from enough. It was too vague, too hollow, too... hard to understand. But how could he make it any clearer, when even he was still trying to understand, let alone explaining? The tightness on his chest clenched harder. It felt something buried inside there, somewhere deep deep down, was trying to crawl out ugly, trying to declare itself to the world, to the man standing before him. But he couldn't. He couldn't allow it. He just couldn't. Couldn't let it ruin what they had -- if he still had it. They were friends, after all -- hopefully still.

"You got to look at me, man," Dean started, moving as close as he could at the other side of the fire ring. Holy or not, that fire might burn him too if he moved one inch closer, but Dean didn't care. Every line on his face was screaming disbelief and hurt, and pain, and aching, and something else, everything else that Cas couldn't quite read clearly. So Cas just read harder, watching his lips thinned, his eyebrows burrowed, his eyes watered.

"You got to level with me and tell me what's going on. Look me in the eye and tell me you're not working with Crowley."

Cas looked at him, trapped in those eyes, trapped by the silent pleading in there. Dean was praying, he realized, inside his head, silently, probably even unconsciously. Please, please tell me you're still my friend. Please tell me I can still trust you. Please, Cas. Tell me the truth.

Castiel looked back, straight and unfaltering. He stared into Dean's eyes, answering, quietly, in his head. This is the truth. I am still your friend. You can still trust me. I'm still me.

The silent gaze lasted for a second, then two seconds. Dean's furrow unfolded ever so slightly. Just a degree. The pain was receding, relief was growing. There was hope, there was so, so much hope in there that Cas couldn't bear.

Cas, please. Don't lie to me. Tell me I'm not wrong about you.

Cas watched fire flickering in Dean's eyes, crackling quietly, overlapping with the image of himself as if he was burning in there. He only had to say he wasn't working with Crowley without looking away. It should be easy. It really should. The lie would be to protect them, to protect himself, to protect the deal, the war, Heaven, and the whole world. When humans want something really, really bad, they lie. It was what Dean taught him, right? And he wanted Dean to trust him really, really bad. And it was for a good cause, for a good reason. He didn't do anything wrong. He just... worked with Crowley.

He looked away.

He couldn't lie to Dean. Not this time. Not again. Not even when there were right reasons to do, as he believed. Not even... when it could mean the end of their friendship, everything between them, gone. Not even that. He had to give Dean the truth, like he was asked. As simple as that. He didn't deserve Dean, but Dean deserved truth.

And Dean understood.

"You son of a bitch," Dean whispered. Cas looked back. The last thread of flickering hope in Dean's eyes was extinguished, any remnant hint of relief disappeared, all replaced by pain, only the indescribable pain and mountainous betrayal. The look on his face and in his eyes was so sharp, like blades, but instead of cutting into Cas's heart, it looked like they were slicing open Dean's heart, piece by piece, tearing it apart, forcing it out of his chest. And Cas had to just stand there, watching the imagined blood gushing out from Dean's chest, pained worse than getting himself stabbed and killed.

And he was the one causing all those harm to Dean. Cas couldn't bear it.

"Let me explain," Cas pleaded, but his voice shattered. The words were pale. Every single syllable felt so hollow that they fell into the fracture between them. For a second, Cas really wanted to step over the fire, reaching out to Dean, touching his shoulder, putting his palm over the handprint on Dean's shoulder, telling him everything -- everything in his heart, every feeling that he shouldn't be feeling as an angel, just, absolute everything. Because he would be telling him when he stood over the fire, being burned and torched. He could die before Dean's eyes when he finished telling him everything, and never worry about the consequence.

But he didn't.

He couldn't die yet. Not when there were still war in Heaven, when Raphael and Crowley were still out there, when there were still too many danger in this world that could hurt Dean. He had to live, as friend or enemy, he had to be there, for him, for all of them -- protecting them whatever way he can. This is the only way. Dean could hate him, but at least, he would be safe in the end.

So Cas just told them about Raphael, about Heaven, about war, about things that seemed so big and beyond, and also... so unimportant. All the things and reasons that weren't about himself, that weren't trivial and delicate and emotional -- nothing about what he was thinking, or feeling, because... well, why would Dean even be interested in those?

"I had no choice," Cas said miserably. Dean wouldn't understand.

"No, you had a choice," Dean countered quietly, devastated, his eyes shining with glitter of tears. "You just made the wrong one."

Is it wrong to give everything to save you? Is it wrong to try to keep you safe and happy and out of all this mess? Is it so wrong to... condemn myself so that you could get a chance to have the peace and happiness you always wanted? Wasn't it exactly what I did during the Apocalypse and when we were fighting against Lucifer?

I had a choice during the Apocalypse and I chose you, and I died and you almost did too. I had a choice when we were fighting against Lucifer and I chose you, and I died and you almost did too. I had a choice now to fight against Raphael, and I chose you, but a different one, so that I might still die, but you wouldn't. This is my choice, Dean, it's always you. Can you not see it?

Cas watched Dean's eyes, watching the glitters gathering and shining like stars in the dark space, couldn't stop thinking, couldn't stop remembering.

He was there when Dean was raking the leaves; he was there watching Dean making breakfast with the woman and the kid he chose to live together with in a normal life; he was there seeing him go to work in a garage, working with cars because that's what he loved, and go to pub with his coworkers. Dean was happy, and he didn't pray. Not once, for an entire year.

Cas visited him, every single day, watching him -- watching over him. But Dean was always peaceful and happy. Content. And normal now. He wasn't in any danger that required Castiel's protection.

Dean didn't need an angel anymore. I wasn't needed anymore. Cas had thought, swallowing, not understanding why his wings felt heavy, why his throat felt bitter, why his chest felt tight.

He flew away without showing himself. There was no reason to show himself.

He came back again when his garrison failed, and again when he was beaten up by Raphael, threatened to either yield or be killed. He stood there, in the invisible ether, watching Dean.

I need you. Castiel remembered thinking. And the thought scared him more than knowing he could be killed by Raphael very soon. It was unheard of in Heaven or on Earth, that an angel needed a human more than the human needing the angel.

How could he possibly make Dean understand how impossible and terrifyingly vulnerable that felt like? That he was even capable of feeling those things? Dean wasn't an angel, so how could he understand what it felt like? Just like Cas wasn't a human, so how could he --?

There wasn't any word in Enochian for feelings, and he hadn't learned enough human language to know what those bubbling feelings inside his chest were called -- the ones that made his eyes hot when he was watching Dean, the ones that made his lips dry, his throat tight, his chest ache, the ones that made him wet his lips and swallow and force his breath in and out. How is it possible, to have a word, a sentence, or a language, invented by some human some centuries ago, to describe and explain the precise feelings and thoughts that he was having right now? Where did he even begin to explain? What is he even going to explain? Everything is too complicated -- it's just... too complicated.

"You don't understand. It's complicated." That was all Cas could manage. Words failed him utterly. If only he could crack open his chest and show Dean his beating heart, and like human fairytale stories usually went, with a glimpse of his heart, Dean would understand. But the reality didn't work that way.

Dean only looked at him like he didn't know him any more, like he said the biggest, wrongest statement in the world. "No, actually, it's not, and you know that. Why else would you keep this whole thing a secret, unless you knew that it was wrong?"

I couldn't tell you, because I didn't know how. I wasn't ready, and I was scared. Cas opened his mouth, but no words came out. I couldn't tell you, because even the fighting and losing the war in Heaven and getting killed, felt easier than having to come to your doorsteps, knocking on the door of the house you shared with a family you chose, and breaking the peace and normal life that was almost impossible to have but you already found. I couldn't tell you, because all I ever wanted, was you, being happy and content, with or without me, and I couldn't be the one that took those away from you.

He couldn't say anything then. And he still couldn't say anything now. Only, low and devastated, "It sounds so simple when you say it like that. Where were you when I needed to hear it?"

"I was there. Where were you?" Dean answered, the lines on his face hardened.

Right then, the squeaking sound of demons approached rapidly from the night sky, audible through the open window, threatening their lives. They didn't have much time now.

I was there, too. But we just weren't there for each other.

I'm sorry.

They both glanced at the window's direction. Demons could arrive any second now.

Now, go. Save yourself, and don't mind me.

"Run. You have to run now! Run!"

I can die, and I accept it. Just, be safe, Dean. That's all I ever wanted. That's why I did everything.

The humans ran toward the door hastily, Bobby and Sam filed out of the door, but Dean paused. And he looked back. Desperate and overwhelmingly pained, he looked back and held the gaze with the angel inside the Holy fire ring. Pain was materialized in the air between them, bleeding out from both eyes.

There was no words.

Adrenaline was still pumping high with the fast beating of his heart, Dean pulled the demon blade out and pushed the body down the steps.

His eyes followed the body as it rolled down the stairs, stopping at the man's feet.

And immediately, he forgot how to breathe.

The man looked up slowly, with Castiel's face and eyes. His hairs are combed down, his eyes wide with startle, but it was undoubtedly him.

"What was that?" he asked.

There was no sign of recognition in his blue eyes.

Dean's heart leapt and fell down heavily, crashing into the floor of his chest.

Dean couldn't find his voice to answer, and he couldn't stop staring.

Castiel was in a soft sweater shirt, zips half way down, over a casual blue button-up -- something he would never wear, or rather, just something Dean had never seen him wear ever.

He hurried toward the woman tied to the chair by the demon, his moves urgent and gentle, his eyes full of care -- it was the type of look that was usually reserved and directed to Dean. Dean felt his gut tumbling sick. He already had a good guess about what was happening here, the moment Cas looked at him like a stranger, but knowing about amnesia and witnessing and experiencing it happening to the person -- the angel -- who used to know everything about him was still difficult.

"I'm Emanuel." Cas reached out a hand, politely and distantly, his eyes straight on Dean's face.

Dean almost forgot he should shake his hand, just as a normal human social manner. "Dean. I'm... Dean." His voice came out cracking. He nearly forgot his own name when those familiar blue eyes were locked on him, so familiar, yet so far away, warm, but the warmth had nothing to do with him. Cas was just being kind, like he always tried to be. Nothing special about Dean.

Cas's eyes turned back to the woman next to him, who he held hands closely with. Then turned back to Dean. "Thank you. For protecting my wife," he said gently and genuinely.

Dean almost choked on his spit. His wife. Cas had a wife. And he was working as a faith healer, living a quiet, normal, human life.

"Your wife. Right." Dean heard himself answering, dumbfounded, hearing his own voice as if it was across a closed glass door.

So this is how it's like, watching your friend living a happy, peaceful, normal life, not knowing anything about the ugly, dark side of the world, not setting his foot on the hunting life. Is this how Cas felt, that year when he spent with Lisa and Cas was knee-deep in trouble? When he just couldn't gather up enough courage to knock on his door?

Dean watched the angel's face, staring so hard and long that he was sure it had long passed the normal acceptable human interaction rule, but Cas didn't protest, so Dean just kept staring. He looked different, but still more or less the old Cas. The crinkles on his face, even though the angel shouldn't age, the curve on his lips, the light inside his pupils. All so familiar, but none belonged to him. Dean found himself almost losing the courage to ask him for help, to pull an innocent, ignorant, and amnesiac Cas back into the ugly, real world.

Sam was dying. So he had to. But Dean hated that was the way it had to be. It had been six months since he believed Cas drowned and died in that river. Six months, and he never stopped having nightmares nights after nights seeing Cas bleeding Leviathan goo and wading into the water until the water devoured him, leaving only a bloody trench coat floating to his feet, becoming the last thing he could hold desperately onto to remember Cas by.

It nearly destroyed him.

But how could he let Cas know? Especially when Cas blessedly didn't remember that?

So Dean decided, right there in Daphne's house, he'd keep this as long as he could. Not hiding the past from Cas, but let himself be the only one to bear the pain. They would never be the same again, but why double the pain when he could shoulder it for both of them?

But as it turned out, it was far more difficult to avoid the topic of "who Cas is" when Cas was really sitting next to him.

Dean couldn't talk about Cas in past tense, like he was dead, and he couldn't talk about Cas like he had him back, because he didn't. The twist in his gut made him turn his head every two seconds when he drove them to the hospital Sam was in, just to see Cas -- or Emanuel, as he called himself -- was still sitting in the passenger seat of Impala. The view of him, that he was alive, alone, was enough to calm Dean's nerve down slightly, no matter how small the degree was.

But inside his head, there was still a huge mess -- it seemed, there was just forever going to be a huge mess in his life, in the world, around everyone he knew and befriended with.

Inevitably, they started talking about Sam, and that he's dying. And inevitably, Cas had to ask how that happened.

Here we go. Dean thought, glancing at Cas again for the thousandth time in this trip.

"Someone did this to him." He said, trying to find somewhere easy to start. But there was nothing easy in any of this conversation. Nothing easy when it was Cas that he was talking to, when he thought he would never see him again. He couldn't even mourn him properly when he was still angry about what he did to Sam, but he couldn't not mourn him anytime when he ever just thought about Cas. It pained him to an unreasonable degree, and he was so messed up and confused and pissed about everything -- the world, the things they had to go through, and Cas, for doing everything, and for dying.

"You're angry," Cas said quietly, watching him from the shadowed seat. He was more observant about human emotions now that he didn't remember who he was, Dean noticed. He wondered briefly if it was being an angel -- or just, remembering he was an angel -- making him bad at human interactions. But it didn't matter. Cas wasn't wrong, but he might not be able to figure out why -- Dean felt he was angry about everything and everyone nowadays, after Cas's death.

He answered begrudgingly, "Dude broke my brother's head." He tried to force himself to focus on that fact, so that he didn't have to think about that floating bloody trench coat, so that the pain inside his chest could be more manageable.

Cas didn't stop staring at him. Dean didn't know what he saw on his face, or rather, how much unsaid words and thoughts he had let leaked onto his own face. He was usually good at hiding those things, putting on a mask, laughing things off, but not when it came to Cas, it never worked.

Cas must have seen everything, reading him like reading an open book, even though they technically just met for like about an hour. Cas could already see him through. "He betrayed you, this dude. He was your friend."

The sharp pain came back, stabbing Dean in his chest, extending to his hands and feet, numbing his fingers.

I'm still your friend. I'm still Cas.

I wish this changed anything.

I'm sorry.

Dean blinked hard, swallowing. It wouldn't be called "betray" if they weren't friend before, isn't it? Which makes things just so much worse. Are they still friends? He sure hope they're, but would Cas thinking the same? Would Cas even want to have those memory back?

Dean glanced at Cas again, running into his eyes. Cas didn't stop observing him, just like old times. It seemed, memory or not, Cas was still just Cas, unchanged the slightest. And still waiting for his answer.

He couldn't say yes and he couldn't say no, so he said instead, "Well, he's gone." He's gone. And Dean has lost him.

He lost him to the Apocalypse and got him back, he lost him to the Devil and got him back, he lost him to the God power and Leviathan, and would he have enough luck to have Cas back again? How many times more can he lose Cas before the universe would finally decide not return Cas back to him?

"Did you kill him?" The innocent ignorant Cas asked next, surprising Dean by the question. He shot him a startled look. Seriously, this amnesic Cas only technically knew him for an hour, how did he manage to dissect him the same way as the old Cas? Just the same as the angel who saved his soul and rebuilt every inch of his body. Was the real Cas still there, buried underneath the Emanuel?

"I sense that you kill a lot of people," Cas clarified carefully, seeing his questioning look. He looked more curious than afraid, as if telling a killer that they have the look of a killer wasn't the most dangerous, life-threatening even in his blank life. As if, he was just so intuitively sure that, even if Dean looked like he killed a lot of people, Cas, who just sit next to him in the same car ten inches away, wasn't in any danger.

And the thing was, it wasn't wrong, really. Dean thought. He hunts and kills for a living, and he definitely has killed more than his share of people, or caused enough to die that their deaths would be on him. But he didn't kill Cas. But he also didn't not kill Cas. He was the reason that Cas died the first two times, after all, wasn't he?

"Honestly-- I-I don't know if he's dead. I just know that this... whole thing couldn't be messier," Dean stuttered, not knowing what was the right thing to answer, not to give too much information that Emanuel remembered enough to become Cas, but also not having to lie to Cas. Talking with Cas, it was just so painfully easy to tear himself apart, to tell him things he didn't even know were there.

He kept his eyes forward, driving, thinking. The dark road stretched under the wheel, extending behind them. They still had some time to talk, and Dean realized, he hadn't really talked with anyone like he talked with Cas for too long. And he missed this, he missed this so much that the feeling inside his chest and gut was making him sick.

"You know, I used to be able to just shake this stuff off. You know, whatever it was." Feelings. Whatever feeling is was. And pain and hurt, and twisted gut. Even the hatred and grudge. All the strongest, sickest feelings. Whatever it was.

"It might take me some time, but I always could. What Cas did..." Dying before my eyes. Twice. With all the "sorry"s and "Thank you"s and things they didn't have time to sort out.

"I just can't -- I don't know why." Nights after nights. Dreams and nightmares of Cas going into the river over and over again. Leaving him. Dying. Exploding. Disappearing. And then, nothing.

Dean didn't mention to anyone, and he wouldn't let anyone see him cry, but in those dreams, he cried. He sobbed for the angel he knew watched over him for all his life, like his mom told him; he sobbed for their story to end so abruptly; he sobbed for the loss in his heart like a big chunk of flesh was missing there and there was nothing, nothing in the whole universe could fill in the painful gap.

He didn't let anyone know, but he would sneak out the motel room after the midnight, after Sam was deep asleep, and opened the trunk to grab the bloody trench coat, holding it tightly in his hands, and sobbed into its fabric. He didn't know what was wrong with him, he didn't know why Cas's death destroyed him to this degree like no one else's, not even mom's, not even dad's. He didn't know why, and he couldn't understand. Only the pain. All the pain.

And Cas answered him, "It doesn't matter why." As if he heard him. Heard his memory of the past six months, heard his midnight screams from the nightmares and muted sobbing when he couldn't do anything but curl up in the back seat of the car, holding the trench coat like it was for his dear life.

It doesn't matter why.

It just is.

"Because you're human."

It sounded so easy when Cas put it this way. How come Cas seemed to be the more human one among them. Dean found himself amused, but surprisingly, Cas's words landed.

It's okay to hurt, it's okay to not shake it off. For the first time, this thread of thoughts appeared in his head, and Dean felt... relieved. It's okay to feel pain and betrayed, and unbearable to lose Cas, and miss him and blame him for Sam's suffer. It's okay to feel all of those. It's okay to talk about those, and it's okay to let them be there, allow them to stay in his heart.

Dean breathed out, finding his breath smoother now. It's okay that things are still not solved, and the world still needs saving. He doesn't have to hold together, he doesn't have to stay strong all the time, for everyone.

Dean glanced at Cas again, feeling his eyes hot and slightly wet. Still too much feeling, still too many thoughts, but oddly, with Cas's words, he was already feeling so much better.

I miss you, he thought hard, portraying Cas's profile with his eyes, lingering on his stubbles, his eyes, his nose, his lips, his hair. He doesn't know if it would become something bordering on a prayer or if Cas could still pick up on those. But he thought anyway. I miss you so much, Cas.

It was difficult, to not know yourself and then come back to re-know yourself. Castiel realized it the hard way.

He guessed it to some extent when the man standing before his house just simply froze and couldn't stop staring at him as he untied his wife, the woman saved him from the river, as he reached out a hand to shake. The man called himself Dean, and didn't comment anything about the time before his blank memory started. He already had a distinct feeling that he knew this man from before, and Dean must have recognized him too. But Dean didn't bring it up, so he didn't ask, either. There must be a reason why Dean had that pained look in his eyes, and didn't stop staring when he thought he wasn't looking.

It turned to something increasingly clear when Dean lashed out about "the dude broke his brother's head," the simmering anger under his tone made Dean look both dangerous and vulnerable. Castiel didn't remember anything, but already instinctively, he could read Dean, his pain, his suffering, his confusion, his... something. There was something more there, vague but clear, light but heavy, like a flying thread of smoke, like lightest cirrus cloud in the wind, like fleeting aurora light, appearing and disappearing in his eyes when he cast glances at him, like he wanted so desperately to call him a different name than "Emanuel", but holding himself back. Castiel wondered, as he watched the shade and color change on Dean's face, what was his old self like, that made Dean look like... this. So broken and so pained. He wondered, if he did something really bad, if he was a bad person.

It didn't take long for the memory to come back, but only after he stopped pretending he didn't notice Dean's look of recognition.

"You can tell me." Cas told him, after overhearing his argue with the demon Meg.

The pained look in Dean's eyes deepened. Everything deepened, including anger. "How do you know?" he said, so clearly torn apart. "You just met yourself. I've known you for years."

It wasn't everyday one'd hear someone else to say they knew you more than yourself -- more, and longer, and deeper.

And Cas believed him. He braced himself. In the car here, Dean already tried to test him, asking him what if he was some kind of bad guy. So it must be it then, however he didn't feel like a bad person, however much good he tried to do to people, using his special newly discovered power to help people, to heal them, he must have done something really bad.

"I'll be fine," he said, tightening his jaws. He didn't know that, but he had to say that. It sounded like an easy phrase to slip out from the tip of his tongue, it sounded like something he's heard a lot and said a lot, before. Before he forgot who he was.

He wasn't.

He wasn't fine when the memory rushing back in.

He wasn't fine when it felt like a different life forcing back into his body, his being, his brain. He was him, but he also wasn't. He was watching his life replaying before his eyes, from millions of years ago when the stars and planets were being created, to the first grey fish crawling to the shore, to the dinosaurs whining in the burning lands, to the Neanderthals crying in the falling avalanche, flashing the millions of years by in a blink, and then, all of sudden, slowing down when it reached five years ago.

He watched himself step into the barn, lights and bulbs bursting over his head, lightening and thunders accompanying him; he watched himself stand shoulder to shoulder to the hunter in the prophet's house, making his own decision, picking his side next to Dean; he watched himself save them and saved by them over and over again; and he watched himself glow with power of God, ordering them to kneel, and he watched, with horror, that Dean started bending his knees.

He snapped back to the reality, realizing the same Dean from his memory was standing before him, looking at his face, worried and desperate.

"Cas?" he called, so careful, so unsure.

Castiel met his eyes, feeling his chest heaving and falling out of control, his breath coming in and out broken. "I remember you. I remember everything."

Now he understood all those looks of pain, the torn-apart. He never hated himself more than this moment.

"I deserved to die." Castiel said. There was no use sugarcoating what he had done, and what punishment he deserved, then why did Dean still even try to defend him, as if seeing him anything worthy of forgiveness? Even if Dean somehow miraculously forgave him, he couldn't ever forgive himself anyway. "I can't possibly fix it... So why did I even walk out of that river?"

With his crime on Earth and Heaven, he really didn't deserve to live. And with the pain he caused Dean, he really should kill himself. Castiel started walking away, even though he didn't know where to go. There was nowhere to go.

And Dean wouldn't let him.

The trench coat Dean gave him surprised Cas more than anything. More than the desperate look, more than the pleading eyes, more than the trembling hands.

Dean kept his trench coat, and when he handed it back, watching him put it on, it looked almost as if, Dean was seeing him for the first time again. As if, in this human's eyes, he was never fallen, he was never broken, he was never wrong.

As if, there was still a chance to make things right. For the world, and for them.

And Castiel heard his praying. And that, only that look in Dean's eyes, Castiel felt, only that is the place where he was given a second chance to be reborn.

I'll do anything to fix this. He promised quietly. Anything. Dean. For you.

And so he did.

Dean thought he was going crazy. Seeing Cas walking by the side of the road, and standing outside the window in a stormy night, and at the corner of his eyes where he wasn't looking. He was no stranger to hallucinations, from hellhounds, from wraiths, from all kinds of monsters, but this, seeing Cas day and night, so lost and helpless in day, falling back into Purgatory over and over again in nightmares, it was breaking him apart from inside worse than any monster could have ever done.

More than once, he wondered maybe he was still stuck in Purgatory, held captive by some dead djinn there and imagining the life on the top side. And those images of Cas was just the reality bleeding into his vision -- which made it so much easier than to think he got out but Cas didn't, to think he failed Cas like he failed everyone else in his life and lost everything and everyone he cared about.

Which was why seeing Cas, dirty and full of Purgatory filth, appearing behind him in the reflection of the motel bathroom mirror almost gave Dean a real heart attack.

He spined around to touch the hallucination, and only then, realized it was real -- Cas was real. Dean's brain was buzzing so loud with disbelieving ecstasy that he nearly missed what Cas was saying then, about how he tried to reach out.

Dean found himself not able to do anything but staring at the angel. Cas was still wearing the hospital gown back when he was crazy before they ended up in Purgatory -- it felt like so long ago now, one year, to be precise, but it already felt like a previous life. Monster guts and blood covered his coat and skin, but he wasn't wounded. And then there was the peach fuzz beard.

The only other time Dean actually noticed the beard on Cas was the time he was sent by Zachariah to five year ahead into the world crawling with Croatoans, and met a very human and very stoned Cas. But even back then, his stubbles looked more like a soft shade than a real fuzzy beard.

The angel's body shouldn't age, or in this matter, shouldn't change at all -- growing hair or beard or even nail just simply shouldn't happen.

Dean stared at Cas's face, the beard surrounding his dry lips as they opened and closed when he explained how he couldn't connect with them. His mind was occupied by too many thoughts all at once, and first of all --

"I-I gotta ask," Dean started, not really knowing if he accidentally cut Sam and Cas's conversation short, but the other two turned to him quietly. "What's with the beard?"

Sam raised his eyebrows. "That's the thing you are most curious about?"

Dean shrugged slightly, not letting his eyes miss any movement of Cas's. Cas shifted in his seat, touching his beard self-consciously. "Time... moved differently in different parts of Purgatory," he started slowly, his eyes moving away from Dean, looking down at the air between them.

Dean's heart sank. He was afraid to hear something like that. "How different?" He had to ask.

Cas licked his lips, not answering.

"Cas, how different? How long have you been in Purgatory really?"

"One year --" Cas tried.

"Bull," Dean called him out, half worried, half pissed -- why was he always so easily pissed nowadays? Especially around Cas? A distant thread of reasoning mind wondered, but it didn't stay very long. "You never have anything more than a five o'clock shade for your entire angelic life, and now you suddenly have like a Christian Bale beard?"

"Batman has a beard?" Sam was distracted.

"Rescue Dawn!" Dean rolled his eyes at him, turning quickly back to Cas. "And you're about the same way sizing down now. So, come on, I need to know."

Cas nodded quietly, understanding. "I didn't know it at first, but it seems, the time flew faster near that stream you found me. Leviathans and monsters generally would try to avoid that area, because even though they could technically live in the Purgatory forever, the eternity doesn't ensure eternal youth, they could still age and die there. So I decided, that would be the safest place to hide from them, and of course, lead them away from you."

Dean stared at him, wordless. How does this freaking happening again? Over and over and over again, they tried so hard to save each other, and over and over and over again, some of them had to pay the price one way or another -- death, or so much more suffering.

"Cas --" His words were getting incoherent.

"Seventy-five years, give or take, but I could be wrong, time felt extremely slow when there was no star as indication. But then you said you prayed every night, and I heard all of them. It helped a lot with calibration." Cas answered, then, seeing the look on Dean's face, he added quickly, "It's nothing. I'll get washed up, you wouldn't notice a thing. Angels can live for eons, you don't have to worry. This is just... the vessel." He hurried to the bathroom before they could stop him.

Dean sighed. This is just so Cas. "It's nothing" the hell. He remembered every single nasty bits when he was in Purgatory, the scratch and claw and kill and bleed he had to do to get to the portal, and that was without a bounty on his head and a whole Purgatory of Leviathans on his tail. He couldn't imagine how Cas's Purgatory life must be like. More importantly, he haven't got a chance to ask how Cas got out, on his own. He decided he'll ask later.

But then almost immediately, he got distracted when Cas came back out of the bathroom, fresh and new, in a whole set of clean suit and trench coat, having his beard shaved and his face cleaned, even his hair was sorted out the way they should be, rumpled to the professional rumple level.

Cas was still wiping his fingers dry with a washcloth when he opened the door, but Dean doubted he was actually using the human way of cleaning up. But maybe that was just the final touch.

Cas smiled at him, spreading his arms, displaying his new outfit -- his cloth and his vessel alike. "Better?"

It had been too long to see Cas like this, normal and complete and sane and... beautiful. Dean couldn't stop staring, matching his face with his look branded in his memory from the early days -- and there was no mistake.

Seventy-five years of lone Purgatory life didn't leave a mark on Cas's face, except maybe making his eyes slightly more tired, more dark, but this could just be the lighting. Dean's eyes wandered on his face, his eyes, his nose, his lips, his exposed skin right around the edge of the shirt, his fingers that were still wiping on the white washcloth, even his trench coat was neat and clean and straight.

Dean exhaled a long relieved sigh, smiling a half smile. His angel was back, and safe, and complete. The twist in his stomach finally unlocked itself a degree (ever since it knotted maybe five years ago). And he thought, he really, really wanted to reach out to grab the angel and pull him into a hug like he did in Purgatory. But Sam was here, and this wasn't Purgatory, so he commanded his hands to stay still where they were, and he didn't reach out.

Another punch sent Dean fly, and he knew, just like that night about five years ago when Cas kicked him in the chest and sent him crashing to that metal net at the end of the dark alley, that there was no chance to win the fight, and that Cas could kill him so easily. Cas was an angel after all. But he had to believe -- whatever was happening inside Cas's head, he had to believe Cas wouldn't kill him.

Dean panted heavily, feeling his eyes swollen quickly and his cheeks bleeding. His whole body was shaking with pain. He didn't care to feel how many bones were broken already. He reached out a hand, and he grabbed the skirt of Cas's trench coat. "I know you're still in there. I know you can hear me. Cas, it's me."

He was pleading. Dean realized. He never pleaded, not to anyone, not even when he was dying, or anyone he loved was dying. He didn't use to pray for the exact same reason -- praying was just like pleading in his mind. But he prayed to Cas, so many times now, and now, he pleaded for Cas to hear him.

Cas grabbed his right arm in his left, and his left lifted with an angel blade. Cas's eyes weren't on him, almost as if he was dreamwalking, as if he wasn't really here, it was only his body making the moves.

The blade could land any time, stabbing through his heart any time.

Dean looked up. He didn't look at the blade, he looked at Cas, and he really looked. "This isn't you, Cas." It was getting difficult to even speak now, blood bubbling in his throat, he suspected probably something wasn't quite right with his ribs or lungs, but he pushed on, letting the words tumbling out as clearly as he could manage. "You're family, Cas." Not just friend, not just "best friend", Cas was family. Dean tried to think if he had made this clear to Cas, but his mind was a little slowed down by the pain, so he gave it up, only grasping on Cas's trench coat harder, leaning onto it like it was the last hope he could hold on to, like this was where he'd rather be, if he was to die soon.

The blade hesitated in the air. Cas's hand was shaking, like his muscle was fighting between two opposite forces.

Dean only spared a second for a glance to the blade, and shifted his attention back to Cas, raising his voice, trying so desperately to reach inside, wherever the angel really was inside this vessel, inside this body. He tried to think what else could be said, what else he hadn't said before. He searched the back of his mind, and his mind found the box of feelings he tugged at the deepest pit since the first day they met. The box had a label "Never open" on it. And he reached out a shaking bloody hand and opened it.

Memories and feelings poured out, all about Cas, all about himself, overwhelming him like throwing him under the sea of feelings, surrounding him with deep wet blue. "I... you..." Dean's mind floated, but there was one missing word in that sentence, one missing verb. What did he try to tell Cas again?

He thought about the helpless nights in Purgatory when he couldn't find the angel and he wouldn't leave without him. He thought about the final battle with the dick Leviathan boss right before they were damned, what did he say to make Cas go with him even when the crazy child-like Cas didn't want to go? He thought about all the fights before that, one after another.

"You're family." Dean thought hard again. But no, not this one, he already said that one. What was that word that means someone was extremely important to your life and that you couldn't imagine a life without them? Even if you could, you wouldn't want that?

"Cas, I need you." The words came out naturally, flowing out through the bloody teeth and tongue. I need you. I need you. I need you. His mind supplied slightly more nimbly than his mouth. Came back to me, Cas. Hear me, please. If everything we had between us mean anything to you, fight this, Cas. And came back to me.

The blade dropped to the floor, and Cas blinked. He heard him.

The training had become a muscle memory. It was getting easier the more he went through it.

The order was simple -- kill the human, whoever he was, no matter how he fought back or prayed or pleaded for his life, it wouldn't matter, just kill him, quick and clean.

So Castiel followed the order. He would get approved if he completed the order fast and neat, just like a good fighter that he was.

After the first one thousand, he blocked out his vessel's senses when he went through this, he didn't really need his eyes or nose or ears to sense his surrounding like a normal human would after all, he didn't need to see or hear or sense the human in any way, because it wouldn't matter. So he just automated his vessel, staring at the empty air ahead. It was indeed making the task very efficient -- the target wouldn't even register as a living thing in his automated brain, it would just be like an object, like a rock.

He succeeded one after another, and his trainer was pleased with his training. Castiel's idling brain could even start wander in the middle of tasks, mixing the memory with the reality.

And then, the image of a dark crypt mixed into the image in his mind's eyes. The image blurred with the reality, overcoating it like a badly double-exposed film. He saw a man kneeling on the ground before him, and he saw his training hall at the same time. His task remained the same, kill the object.

Castiel immobilized the object first, strategically attacking its major bones and limbs, and then raised his angel blade, ready to finish the task. But this one, somehow, it felt different. It vibrated with life and shined with light inside the vessel -- no, the body. There was a soul inside that body, mumbling some words, crying some pleads, the usual.

Castiel hesitated -- and he knew he shouldn't -- thinking maybe he should turn the senses back on, but this wasn't part of the task, this wasn't what he was told to do, this wasn't him.

The voice passed into his mind anyway, resonating with his thoughts before he could decide on the next move. The voice belonged to someone important to him, like soul and grace level important, he knew it, but his brain was too fuzzy to recognize the sound yet.

The voice was telling him he was family. But he didn't have a family, did he? He was an angel, and he only had his garrison and his orders -- he never had a family. So this couldn't be right. He held his blade higher, ready to push down.

The voice was shaking violently, but pushing into his head persistently. "It's me." The voice said desperately. "And I need you." There was pain and desperation and hope and yearning and every human emotion mixed in that simple sentence, in those simple words, but words had powers.

Cas remembered now, just like when he walked out of river and was told who he was, once again, he felt his real core being was being summoned back, crashing out from behind a wall, flowing through his body like melted snow from a mountain rushed down in the first warm spring day and watered the land.

It was Dean. And Dean needed him.

No one needed him before, not really, not like this, not when they were on the verge of being murdered ruthlessly but still held onto the hope of waking him up. This was Dean -- his Dean, the real flesh and blood human Dean, not like all the other training puppets. The real Dean wouldn't plead for his own life, but only for saving him. The real Dean had the brightest soul, dazzling inside his body. The real Dean needed him.

Cas snapped out of the control and loosened the grip on the blade.

He could never hurt Dean. He would never.