Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Are you looking for chickens?”

“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean—‘tame’?”

”It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means ‘to establish ties.’”

- The Little Prince

When Dean first slips back into consciousness, he thinks Alastair has devised a clever new torture for him.

The first thing he knows is that it’s hard to breathe, and the darkness, completely and utterly black, is somehow claustrophobic. 

Dean reaches hands he expects to be tied, and it’s for this reason that he puts too much force behind the movement, slamming his arms into the hard surface just above his his nose—made of something that reminds him of a wooden board under his fingernails. He winces and a primal instinct in him forces him to sit up, which only earns him some wiggle room as the wooden surface groans. 

He sniffs. No sulfur—the stink of Hell is absent from this place. A trick of Alastair’s? But, no, this doesn’t hurt nearly enough to be the work of his tormentor. Though, as he reaches out and finds his body to be entirely intact for the first time in years, he feels a distinct pain in his shoulder, reluctant to be stretched as a particularly bad burn.

He bucks upward. He remembers this feeling deep in his chest now: desperation. It’s a feeling that deserted him somewhat in Hell, replaced by constant cruelty or terrible fear. Never something so simple and human as a need to breathe.

Even Dean is not entirely sure how he makes it out of that damn wooden box. All he knows is this: when he reaches up through layers of packed dirt and feels a pleasant breeze on his hand for the first time in nearly half a century, the last thing he expects is the startling sensation of someone grasping it in their own.

At first, he jerks back, but the stranger with the hand that almost burns where it touches Dean’s skin does not heed Dean’s hesitation. It only finds a firm hold around Dean’s palm and pulls him up.

Bizarre, the strength of that pull. Inhuman. But Dean is too glad of the air on his face to take any notice of it for the moment.

The last thing Dean does after being pulled from the earth he was buried in is open his eyes. They must’ve slipped closed sometime between the box and the breeze; and it’s strange, how quickly he slips back into old habits, into the human instinct and human body and human emotion he almost abandoned completely down in that awful excuse of an afterlife.

When he does manage it, the first thing he sees besides the earlier darkness is a face. A very human one, despite his earlier suspicions.

But Alastair had been deceiving, too. In half a second Dean surges up, grasping for weapons in his pockets and boots that he knows he won’t find. Damn it, Sammy, he scolds in his head, couldn’t you at least have buried me with a damn pocketknife?

It’s the first thought he’s had of Sam in more than ten years.

At the apparent absence of a plausible weapon on his person, Dean settles for tearing the cross embedded in the earth above his grave from the dirt and wielding it like a club at the stranger.

“Who are you?” Dean barks, shifting his weight to account for the strange burning in his shoulder.

The stranger blinks wide blue eyes, and Dean resists the urge to snarl like some kind of feral animal. Instead he takes in his surroundings, surmising that, as long as the stranger is weaponless and some distance away, he’s no real threat. And his surroundings—well, they’re something of an object of interest.

The clearing he’d been buried in is ravaged. The trees forming a circle around his gravesite are demolished, felled and burned to a crisp. Not a single sound is audible but for Dean’s own labored breathing. And—he sniffs—no sulfur.

No God-damn sulfur.

I’m free, he thinks, almost giddily. Against all odds, against the damn will of God, he’s out. And there’s nothing, he decides, that could ever drag him back.

His eyes return to the stranger, whose mouth is open but who appears strangely speechless. He squints, and the stranger squints back. If this is the motherfucker Hell sent to drag him back, they’ve got another thing coming to ’em. “I said,” he snaps, louder, “who are you?”

The stranger steps forward, over the upturned dirt of Dean’s grave. Dean wields the cross higher, and fights the strange urge to growl. But he doesn’t, because he’s not—not some cornered animal. For the first time, he notices the parchedness of his throat, and wonders if demon blood is any good hydration-wise. Seems to be all that’s available, in any case.

Come at me, Dean thinks at the stranger. Come get me, fucker. See how easy it is without your hellhounds backing you up this time.

Hellhounds? Lilith. Yes, Lilith. How could Dean forget? Lilith, and her hounds—

Wait. Wait, where even is he right now? Where’s Sammy? Where’s—

“There seems to be a misunderstanding,” the stranger says, and his tone is gravelly, like his throat is too shallow for the depth of his voice. Dean has trouble deciphering what his words mean for a moment, mind lagging behind.

The box—his coffin. He broke out of it. Yes, that must be true, going by the flakes of wood under his fingernails and the splinters in his hands. But that doesn’t make sense. If Lilith had killed him, like Dean suspects—no, like Dean knows—then why didn’t Sam burn his body? Is Sam even—

Shit, is Sam old now? Has Dean missed his entire life? Is he rotting in some retirement home, seventy years old and wrinkly and absent in the head—does he even remember Dean—?

“I came here to save you,” says the stranger. Dean glares at him. “I’m—”

“Damn right you did,” Dean snaps sarcastically. “And I guess you’re some kind of angel, aren’t you? Just out and about, saving people, ’n’ happened to stumble on my sorry, dead ass, and just couldn’t leave me out in the cold, huh?”

The stranger tilts his head as if he’s puzzled. “I suppose,” he replies haltingly. “I am Cast—”

“Yeah, well, Cas,” Dean interrupts hostilely, “why don’t you tell me what you really are?” He hefts the cross in his arms, ignoring the sting of his shoulder as it stretches. “Any chance you’re somethin’ I can kill with a stake?”

“I don’t understand,” Cast-whatever says, and there’s something in his eyes—something so earnest—that Dean almost, just almost believes he’s really just some poor fucker who stumbled into this mess and lives under some sort of dangerous delusion that’s made him stick around this long. But, no, there’s something in the set of his shoulders that disproves that theory—the beginnings of wrath. Dean knows it well from Alastair. 

“Well,” Dean goes on, shifting the cross in his hands almost casually without ever once dropping his guard, “if you’re not gonna tell me, any chance you know which direction the nearest road’s in? I ain’t really looking for a showdown so soon after digging myself out of my own damn grave, so I’ll go one way, you go another”—he waves vaguely to the west—“and we’ll kill each other another time, how ’bout that?”

“I have no intention of killing you,” is all Cas says in reply, and Dean scoffs at the gall he has to even think he could.

Resurrection’s like a high, he decides. Feels damn good under the sun after almost half a century without it. It’s warm against his back, a few hours beneath its zenith, still drowsily hefting itself up like a lizard on a warm stone in the east. Dean never did take anything stronger than the occasional mystery pill in a filthy bar or sips of suspicious substances when prompted, afraid his dad would find out and rage about it muddling Dean’s hunting mind or some shit like that, but he thinks if he ever did, it would’ve felt like this. It would feel like this—because Dean’s got a whole life ahead of him, a brand new one, and maybe he can afford to fuck this one up just a little more than the last, knowing what he does now about where he’ll end up. 

Fear is a dull thing now, and so are thoughts of Sammy. All Dean needs is a drink. It feels good.

“All right,” Dean says, lowering his weapon, but keeping his footing steady, preparing to disengage and back away with minimal risk of having to turn his back on this guy. “Don’t tell me.”

But just as Dean deems the distance between them great enough to turn away, he sees Cas take a rapid step closer, and immediately Dean’s guard snaps up along with the cross. “Hey, what’d I say?” he reminds the other man lowly. “I go one way, you go another.”

His first suspicion rears its ugly head again. What if this really is a demon sent by Alastair to bring him back, despite his honest eyes and apparent harmlessness? Dean’s in no real position to fight, despite his big talk, and suddenly he’s all too aware of the advantages the stranger has—he’s big, for one, and Dean’s no dwarf.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Cas says, and Dean immediately calculates where and how hard he’ll have to hit this guy in order to get away. Cas steps closer again, and when Dean retreats he matches him step-for-step. “If you’d let me speak before, you’d know that my name is Castiel, and that I am an angel of the Lord, sent to raise you from perdition and set you on your right path.”

Dean blinks, at a loss for the first time in a very long time. Then he follows the same base instinct he’s had since he was four—defensiveness. “Yeah, sure, man,” he snaps. “Just leave me alone.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Cas repeats robotically, eerily. Dean backs up with even more haste than before. 

“All right, all right,” Dean agrees once he realizes Cas won’t stop until he corners him. He plants his feet and stands before the guy, but feels a great absence in his chest—and he knows, dousing the high he’d felt earlier, that the man he’d used to be, Dean Winchester, fearless hunter, is still rotting in that grave, untouched and unrevivable. “Okay, I get it, you’re an angel.” He doesn’t get it at all, actually. He’d rather believe Cas was Satan than some servant of God, because if he really is what he claims, then—then where was he when Dean’s mother needed him that night? “You’ve done what you needed to do. I’m back. Just—just send me on my way, man, c’mon.”

Cas keeps approaching. Dean feels an unpleasant thrill work its way down his spine, flooding his arteries with ice. But he doesn’t back up. He allows Cas to get near, and feels his knuckles go white around the cross he’s still holding like a baseball bat. “No,” Cas says. “I’m here to ensure—”

And that’s all he gets out before Dean’s swinging the damn cross in a wide, powerful arc, putting every single fragment of pain over the last forty years into the movement, imagining it’s Alastair before him, jeering and entirely too close—

But Cas waves a hand before it hits him, sending the cross soaring out of Dean’s hands. It lands and shatters on the log of a broken tree, the sound seeming to echo over the planes of the world—at least, echoing back to Dean. 

Demon, then, Dean surmises, just as the sun crests the eastern sky and casts Castiel’s shadow at a strange angle, and—and are—are those—?

They’re vague in the shadow of the sun, set high behind Cas, casting the disturbed dirt behind him in a black like the space between stars. They’re angular, almost skeletal, and they carve great geometric shapes across Dean’s abandoned grave. Dean feels the hysterical urge to look above him, to see if there’s an eagle flying overhead, something that would explain this in terms that he understands—

But Castiel’s already done that. Angel of the Lord, he’d said. And Dean, looking at the huge black wings cast in shadow behind Cas’s back, has a difficult time disproving that claim.

“Do not,” Castiel begins, and Dean listens like it’s the Ten Commandments he’s been charged with etching in stone, like he’s devout instead of denying, like he’s—like he didn’t just come up from Hell, “presume that you may treat me however you like. Whatever the task I am charged with, however lowly, I demand an ounce of the respect a son of our Lord deserves.”

Dean trips back as if being in Castiel’s presence is burning him. There’s something about that tone, or maybe that voice—it hurts to hear, like Castiel’s put a great howling wind in it, like he’s left a slip of something ancient there. Dean swallows and can’t find the words to respond, but that seems to suit Castiel just fine.

“I will bring you to a road,” Castiel decides, “as you requested. But do not expect any more guidance from me. I am only here to ensure you’re ready when the time comes that you’re needed.”

And then he reaches forward, before Dean can even try to nod in acknowledgement, and grabs Dean’s arm, ignoring his flinch. Suddenly there’s empty space around them both, and Dean feels like they’re soaring for a brief, sickening moment—before he’s let go of, just in time to heave up his stomach acid on the side of a road that hadn’t been beneath his feet just a moment earlier.

Chapter Text

“‘To establish ties’?”

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . .”

“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . .”

“It is possible,” said the fox. “On the Earth one sees all sorts of things.”

— The Little Prince

Castiel, however optimistic he had been about this assignment, is sorely disappointed.

His brothers were right. Humans are rather insufferable, really. Or perhaps this one is just especially so—but if this is the Sword of Michael, the Righteous Man, wouldn’t all other humans pale in comparison? Is this the best of them?

Castiel resists the urge to curl his lip in distaste. 

The so-called Righteous Man is marching along just ahead of Castiel, his head bowed like a sinner’s and his shoulders tense as if he’s awaiting a blow on the back. Castiel recalls vaguely how animals dislike being unable to see threats in their vicinity and feels a little wrinkle of discomfort in his gut, like he’s doing something wrong here. He assesses the situation: himself and Dean Winchester, walking down a road in what appears to Castiel to be some sort of barren wasteland. This is how he was meant to carry out this assignment, is it not?

The last time Castiel was sent to Earth for any meaningful reason, humans had been mere apes, incapable of coherent speech and reason. Castiel remembers his first interaction with Dean at that grave site and figures not much has changed.

But maybe Castiel’s behind on the times. Even with the apes, he’d been trying to see dinosaurs in their behavior; and prehistoric fish in theirs. It’s a wonder he even remembered how to deal with a startled animal like this one, at least at first—keep a steady distance between them, don’t press, try not to let its insolence offend. It seems he had failed at that, he realizes with no small amount of shame.

He should become used to human customs. Treat this man like a living creature instead of a primitive animal Castiel doesn’t understand. And, most importantly, stow his awful, meddling ego.

Just as Castiel resolves to follow these simple rules, he sees Dean Winchester stumble.

Immediately, Castiel extends his power and consciousness to look for threats. But there’s nothing up and about except for the stone Dean had tripped over. The Righteous Man looks slightly—what’s that emotion? A relatively new invention, Castiel recalls; ah, consternation. Dean looks just as startled as Castiel feels annoyed.

Watch your step, he almost demands, but holds his tongue. Patience, Castiel. Mind your ego.

So he remains silent even as Dean’s pace slows,  even as he begins to hear him breathing with more difficulty. It’s called panting, Castiel thinks he remembers. Or is that a canine thing?

It takes two more stumbles and a few additional hours for Dean to come to a complete stop in the blazing sunlight by the infinitely long road, and by this time, Castiel simply can’t refrain from commenting.

“What’s wrong?” he demands as he surpasses Dean and stands before him. Dean gives him an odd look Castiel can’t quite decipher, but otherwise remains half-crouched, hands on his knees and definitely panting this time.

Castiel reaches forward, intending to survey Dean’s soul for damage, but finds his hand swatted away. 

Patience, he reminds himself desperately.

Outwardly, all he gives Dean in return for his frankly mutinous behavior is a low huff, as he would’ve shown disapproval to those apes in times long gone. “What’s wrong, Dean?” he repeats, slightly softer this time.

“Nothing,” Dean says. Funny how it seems not even half a century or so of Hell could fashion him into a good liar. “Just tired. I ain’t built for all this aimless wanderin’, you know.”

Castiel blinks as Dean struggles to straighten. “I was under the impression that humans are nomadic creatures.” 

Now it’s Dean’s turn to look bewildered. “What?” he snaps, and then, before Castiel can repeat himself, “You got shit to do past those pearly gates of yours or are you gonna follow me all day like a lost puppy?”

Don’t take offense, Castiel reminds himself. Think of the apes. Humans are simple creatures—he doesn’t know what he’s saying.

“This is my mission,” Castiel explains slowly. “I am carrying out God’s will. There is no higher calling.”

Dean moves to step past Castiel, and as he does, he extends a hand as if to—touch Castiel’s shoulder? But he seems to think better of it, in any case, and draws back. “Whatever you say, Cas.”

Which is a strange show of faith for a man who just likened an angel of the Lord to a lost puppy. 

They continue on, and Castiel only realizes once Dean stops yet again that he’d been effectively distracted from his previous line of questioning.

Huh. Maybe humans aren’t so dull after all.

This time, when Dean stops, he fully crumples to sit in the dirt in a movement that’s he’s clearly trying to make appear purposeful but seems remarkably unwilling to Castiel. With Dean as his captive audience on the ground, Castiel is determined not to be redirected again.

“What’s wrong?” Castiel insists, crouching before Dean in the shallow shade provided by a nearby tree. Worry rises in his gut, less for the human’s wellbeing and more for his own; after all, how will his brothers in Heaven react to the news that Castiel had somehow let Michael’s Sword die under his watch?

Dean opens his mouth, and Castiel can tell he’s going to spew another lie or two, so he leans forward and snaps, “There are other ways I can find answers, Dean. My asking is a courtesy.”

This seems to do the trick. Dean glares as he leans back on his hands, though his eyes seem a little unfocused. “You don’t know shit about humans, do you?” he asks, and Castiel’s heard enough of Gabriel’s infuriating sarcasm to recognize a rhetorical question. But it seems to be leading somewhere, so Castiel doesn’t snap as he would with Gabriel. “I need water,” Dean admits at last.

Like it’s some sort of sinful confession. 

Castiel squints. “Water?” he repeats confusedly, and then wants to slap himself for his own ignorance. How could he forget? The recipe for life on Earth, and Castiel somehow let it slip his mind.

How dare he call himself an angel when he can’t even use his limited knowledge to keep the human under his supervision alive. This task was supposed to be easy, once he got past the raising a soul from Hell part.

Castiel curses under his breath in Enochian and reaches out for Dean’s arm to transport them elsewhere. Dean moves to slap his hand away again, but Castiel doesn’t let him, and within moments they’re at standing in front of the empty gas station a few more miles down the road from where Dean had sat down. 

Dean scrambles to his feet, and Castiel follows, noticing the human’s dizziness just quick enough to catch Dean by the upper arm before he falls. Dean pushes Castiel away and surges toward the gas station door, slams it open—seemingly surprised to find it unlocked—and when Castiel follows him through the doorway, the angel finds him drinking a bottle of water at a frankly disturbing pace with the litter of two more empty bottles at his feet. Castiel winces at the extent of his own carelessness as Dean drinks and drinks.

Finally, Dean throws the last bottle down and wipes his face with his sleeve. He acknowledges Castiel with a nod, but no eye contact. “Couldn’t have done that sooner?” Dean says, but his tone is quiet, not as mutinous as his words alone suggest.

Castiel blinks. “You told me to bring you to a road.”

Dean scowls, but doesn’t argue with him. He looks around at the gas station, and one of his hands comes up to absentmindedly rub at his shoulder as he surveys his surroundings.

It’s the same place Castiel grabbed him in order to pull him up from Hell, Castiel notes.

Is he hurt there? What else is Dean hiding from Castiel, if he finds such difficulty in admitting a weakness as simple as thirst? Would Dean hide a mortal wound from Castiel? And—most importantly—why?

He decides there’s no harm in asking. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks Dean’s back as the human picks his way through the shelves of food and strange drinks, muttering to himself. At Castiel’s words he lifts his head and finally meets Castiel’s eyes.

“Figured there wasn’t any point,” Dean responds simply, and before Castiel can request clarification, he moves away to the cash register, swiping some bills from within.

Castiel stares after him bewilderedly. 

Yeah, he figures, this mission is going to be a whole lot harder than it first seemed.

Chapter Text

“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

“Please—tame me!” he said.

— The Little Prince

“Hey,” Dean calls back to the angel guy once he’s pocketed all the good snacks in this dump, “any chance you can do that teleporting trick again?”

“It’s hardly a ‘trick,’” Cas replies, frowning, and, damn, who knew that angels were be so damn pretentious? “And I recall telling you not to expect any more guidance.”

Dean scoffs and stomps his way out of the gas station, closing the door in Cas’s face without looking back. “Right, right. Is that what you call this? Guidance?” He gestures with one hand at the empty desert stretching out around them and at the road that ends somewhere beyond the blazing horizon, wondering amusedly if it really will lead him to Rome. “I have no idea where I’m going, man.”

It’s a half-truth. Dean spent years in Hell navigating these same roads by memory in the very back of his head, his soul having retreated to the farthest crevices, wishing to be here, in the middle of nowhere, anywhere but with that knife in his flesh, or, worse, in his own two hands—

“My assignment was not to serve as a compass,” Cas remarks drily, although, in his voice, it sounds almost like a growl. Dean wonders if it strains his throat, all that gravel. 

“Yeah, about that,” Dean wonders aloud, ditching the gas station in favor of marching along the shoulder of the road, trusting that the angel will follow, “what’s up with all this ‘divine mission’ crap? Why wake me from my nap just to trail after me?”

Nap. If he was anyone else, any wiser, Dean would be showing the gratitude that Cas has seemed to expect from hour one. But he’s not anyone else, and Dean’s not nearly naïve enough to take unasked-for favors at face value. Certainly not favors like this.

Cas takes up that same position just behind Dean and to his left as they walk. It itches at Dean’s shoulder blades, the proximity; remnants of Alastair’s sadism, he tells himself, and certainly not some weird knee-jerk fear of whatever Cas will do when Dean’s not looking. 

“It’s God’s will,” comes the angel’s low reply, predictable as ever. 

“Seems awfully like a wild goose chase.”

A pause. “The Lord works in—”

“If you say ‘mysterious ways,’” Dean snaps, “I swear I’ll put myself back in my own damn grave.”

Cas’s footsteps stutter behind him. Dean, one ear focused on them anyway, turns his head a fraction. He feels like prey with a predator lurking behind him, and curses himself internally for it. “I would only dig you out again,” Cas states flatly, the frown audible in his voice.

Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the sweat beading on the back of Dean’s neck. Maybe it’s the damn sound of Cas’s footsteps behind him, sending unpleasant prickles down his spine. Maybe it’s Cas’s words, his disregard for Dean’s will, his—what was it that Dean called it earlier? Pretentiousness? But in any case, Dean can’t take any of it any longer, not like this.

He halts and whirls. “Dude, if you’re gonna follow me for however long it takes to get to Bobby’s, at least walk beside me.”

Cas tilts his head and squints—a favorite gesture of his, Dean remembers from the grave site. It makes Dean instantly defensive, the assessing nature of it. “It spooks you,” Cas says after a moment, more like an announcement than anything else, and Dean muses bitterly, hole in one.

“No,” he lies without an ounce of hesitation. “It’s—it’s just annoying, talking to you while you’re—” He huffs. “Walk beside me or ahead, I don’t care. Just not behind.”

A deeper squint. “Okay,” Cas agrees at last, and moves past Dean to walk a step ahead of him. 

Dean scowls more about his own outburst than anything else, and follows Cas.

“You’ll have to explain your plan to me,” Cas says to the horizon, never once turning in Dean’s direction. “Who is ‘Bobby’?”

Dean just barely refrains from biting his own tongue. “Well, I don’t see any phones around, so I can’t call S—I can’t call my brother, and there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to find him without talkin’ to ’im first. But Bobby?” He exhales softly and hopes the angel can’t hear the fondness in it. “I’d bet my soul that he’s exactly where I left him.”

“No more betting souls,” Cas announces, and Dean shoots him a glare he isn’t sure Cas even notices.

“But first,” Dean says, hurrying his pace, “I’ve got to take a detour.”

Cas actually looks back at that, and Dean struggles to keep the smugness off his face. Serves him right for refusing to just walk next to Dean, the superior bastard. Though it appears Dean’s going to have more pressing issues than just managing to find the place he’s looking for. “What detour?”

Suspicion. Huh. That’s a new expression on Cas’s face. Dean kind of hates it, for some reason.

“I’ve gotta find some things of mine,” Dean answers vaguely.

Cas’s gaze sharpens. He slows a fraction, positioning himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Dean on the shoulder of the road, and Dean, despite the sore lack of signs he can read in Cas’s posture, recognizes a threat when he sees it. “Such as?” Cas demands.

Dean grits his teeth and swivels his head to look at the road—anywhere but at Cas. “Weapons, man.” His knuckles whiten as he tenses in anger. “In case you’ve forgotten, we met a few hours ago. Not to mention that you’re—you’re whatever you are, and I’m Alastair’s favorite chew toy.” He wants to punch something, anything. “We’re not exactly friends.”

“No,” Cas agrees, “but I was assigned—”

“I don’t give a shit about your orders, or who you got ’em from,” Dean snaps. “They don’t entitle you to shit from me. Actually, I think I’ve been too nice so far.”  

Predictably, Cas takes offense. “Need I remind you,” he nearly snarls, “that though my orders were to bring you back, they were also to bring you in line?”

Dean tenses defensively. “The fuck does that mean?” 

“It means I can send you back to Hell,” Cas threatens. “Yes, we need you, but we don’t need you now. I could send you back, and—surely you understand the difference in time between this plane and the demons’? Minutes here are days you could spend as the ‘chew toy’ of that torturer of yours.”

Dean, against his every raging instinct, against everything he’s ever known and done and been told to do, shuts his damn mouth and, to show that his absolute compliance is not so easily earned by some measly—terrifying—threats, stomps past Cas, shouldering him on the way.

Cas isn’t affected in the least. Dean’s whole arm aches.

And just like that, they’re back where they started. Dean, the back of his neck prickling, and Cas, walking behind him with what Dean is sure, should he turn and check, is an angry look on his face.

But the situation doesn’t last for long. Because, unlike before, after a minute or two, Cas steps past Dean to walk just ahead of him.

Dean squints at his back and refuses to show any sign of his relief, nor does Cas reveal why in all Hell he would do Dean a favor after just threatening him with the worst damn thing Dean can imagine.

It’s puzzling. It’s frightening. It’s—it’s new, too, all of this angel business. Cas is certainly an asshole, but—but maybe not to the extent of a demon. No, certainly not to that extent. He’s considerate, in his own way. Despite his anger.

Dean’s never seen anything like it. 

Though maybe that says more about the company Dean keeps than it says about Cas.

Dean has a stash of weapons just south of Sioux Falls, nestled deep within an abandoned storage unit by a sleepy town Dean once hunted a poltergeist in. Among those weapons are various flasks of holy water. Dean ‘accidentally’ spills one on Cas, with minimal results. Though Cas does not seem to be especially convinced of Dean’s clumsiness and remorse, he doesn’t say a word of it but to suggest that he ditch the bag of salt Dean formerly intended to carry on his shoulders like a sack of flour. Dean, miffed by Cas’s suggestion, acquiesces anyway, mostly because his shoulder still burns from the resurrection.

With Dean sufficiently armed, they set off for Bobby’s place. Cas doesn’t seem pressed to assist Dean in any way but with food and water, so Dean’s taken up hitchhiking. It’s much harder with two men than one, but Cas is determined not to leave his side, like some kind of guard dog. 

If Dean’s honest to himself, it’s sort of reassuring to have an angel’s constant protection. But good things never come free, and Dean knows that Cas’s snark and occasional frustration with him are far too low a price to pay.

There’s a second shoe looming over their heads, and Dean is determined not to be caught off guard when it finally falls.

“Hey,” Dean calls to Cas, just ahead, once they finally arrive at Bobby’s front door. “Just—hang back a moment, will you?”

Cas tilts his head and halts, allowing Dean to catch up. His eyes—and, damn, is there some trace of angelic grace in there making them so blue, or is that just the way Cas is?—dart to the door and then back to Dean thoughtfully. “Why?”

His tone’s not suspicious, really, nor is it confrontational. Dean’s found that sometimes, when Cas uses a word or a phrase in a context in which it’s otherwise rude or offensive, he doesn’t mean it so; he’s just—sincerely confused. Genuinely asking.

Cas employs that contemplative squint Dean’s gotten awfully familiar with over the past few hundred miles, and Dean wonders, not for the first time, if he’s even capable of being ingenuine. 

“He’s gonna freak anyway,” Dean replies frankly. “No need to throw an angel in his face along with his dead—” He pauses, grits his teeth, wonders what am I to Bobby, really? And, understanding that the term son might just confuse Cas and unsure if Bobby would even be okay with it, despite him not being here—Dean chooses the next best thing. “His dead friend.”

Cas doesn’t say a word. He just gives Dean that assessing look and then retreats a step, angling himself out of immediate view of the doorway. Dean, who’d hoped Cas would finally take a hint and actually leave, merely sighs softly and walks up to the door.

He hesitates before knocking. When he does, there’s no code in it. He’s not sure if he’ll remember them right if he tried.

He remembers what Cas had said, about the difference between time on Earth and in Hell. There’s no way it’s been as long for Bobby as it’s been for Dean. But what if—what if a wrinkly ninety-year-old opens the door? Or, worse, what if it’s not Bobby at all? What if it’s some family who bought this shithole after his—after—

But Dean doesn’t have to worry for long. In moments, the door swings open, and Dean is staring Bobby in the eye.

He looks the same as he did when Dean last saw him, some half a century ago. 

For a moment, Dean’s a block of ice, a pillar of salt—Lot’s wife in that damn evil plain, staring down at the wreck of her past life. And then Dean smiles and steps forward.

To meet the muzzle of a gun pressed to his abdomen. 

It’s through sheer force of will that he keeps himself still. His smile doesn’t slip off his face, but his shoulders tense—a duality that seems to unsettle Bobby. But Dean can’t help it, because he’s really here. Staring down a barrel at a ghost. A ghost he’d die for, a ghost he loves.

Bobby must be thinking the same thing, he figures, only the ghost part’s probably a lot more literal for him. 

Bobby reaches into his pocket for some holy water, Dean’s sure, and he puts his hands up, expecting a splash—but that’s not what happens.

Instead, Cas flashes forward in half a second, seizing Bobby’s wrist and throwing the gun out of his other hand.

Dean’s smile drops as his hands do. He steps past the gun in the doorway, putting all his force into the shove he gives Cas, but it’s Sisyphean—Cas doesn’t shift an inch. 

Bobby uses his free hand, bereft of the gun, to unsheathe a blade at his hip and try to stab Cas. Cas, for his part, grasps Bobby’s arm in what Dean knows to be a grip stronger than iron and twists it, not enough to break bone but enough to hurt like a bitch, and shoves Bobby further into the house, past a table and into a wall.

Dean considers them lucky that he didn’t push Bobby through it.

He hurries after Cas and, after a moment, puts a calming hand on his arm, like some damsel. He’ll hate himself for it later. “Easy, Cas,” he says. “He’s my friend. C’mon, man,” he insists when Cas doesn’t give an inch, “we’re hunters. It’s just precaution.”

“He could have killed you,” Cas hisses. Bobby leans back into the wall, reaching with his twisted arm toward a nearby gun, but before Cas can do anything stupid like give Bobby a concussion, Dean shoves himself in between them. Cas allows him, for some reason Dean can’t parse, dropping his grip on Bobby.

“It’s fine,” Dean argues. He looks Cas in the eye for a time, and Cas, apparently unwilling to threaten Dean with Hell or bodily harm today, drops his gaze and his guard and allows Dean to push him back. “I told you to wait outside.”

“And God told me to keep you alive,” Cas snarks. “Who do you think I ought’ve listened to?”

Dean scoffs and turns to check on Bobby. 

He’s met with a shockingly cold splatter of holy water to the face. He blinks and wrinkles his nose. 

Bobby stares at him for a moment, the empty flask in his hand. “Dean?” he acknowledges at last, voice hushed. Dean wipes his face with his sleeve as Bobby banishes the flask to the dark underside of a table, likely never to be seen again. “You’re—is it really—?”

“No more tests needed, Bobby,” Dean half-pleads. “It’s me.”

He searches Bobby’s eyes and finds an additional wrinkle at the corner of them. It’s bittersweet, the effect the passage of time has had on both of them—that is, infinitely minimal, if any at all.

It’s been forty years, he wants to tell Bobby. I’m older than you now, did you know? Can you sense the years I’ve lived—the many, many years? Can you sense that the last time I saw you was forever and a million gruesome tortures ago?

But Bobby only gasps “Dean” again, like his name is some sort of prayer, and then surges forward to embrace him. 

Dean half-expects a knife to the gut and is pleasantly surprised by the arms wrapped around him.

No, he decides, Bobby doesn’t know. And I hope he never does.

Wordlessly, Dean hugs Bobby back, and thinks, by the way he said his name just now, that Bobby wouldn’t especially mind if Dean called himself his son—not when Bobby holds him so close and so much like his father should have, all those years and atrocities and apocalypses and flaming houses and dead mothers ago.

Chapter Text

“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . .”

— The Little Prince

Castiel doesn’t understand.

Humans are strange creatures. Prone to sentimentality, but just as soon ashamed of it. They seem fond of hurting each other, Castiel muses every time Bobby slaps Dean soundly on the back or smiles when Dean spits out hot food, despite the high offenses such gestures would be in Heaven. They also appreciate things that should be repulsive to them; for example, the alcohol Dean makes a face at every time he consumes, no doubt burning his throat as it goes down.

Castiel wonders how in the world he’s meant to save one of these creatures when Dean Winchester seems so damn unconcerned with saving himself.

Dean stays in South Dakota for a single day, and within that time Castiel learns much about human beings.

They’re impulsive, for one. Family-oriented. It’s a strange mix, something Castiel has never observed in angels, as are the odd and diminutive nicknames they give each other. Dean even uses one such name for Castiel. Cas. And Castiel finds, shamefully, that he doesn’t really mind it. 

It reminds Castiel of Cassandra, that ancient silenced prophet. Sometimes that’s how he feels, so concerned about Dean’s safety and so disregarded for it. But that’s all right, because he’s on a divine mission—they’re not meant to be easy.

Besides, he thinks he’s starting to warm up to Dean.

He still doesn’t understand the rest. Bobby, especially, is too gruff as far as Castiel’s concerned. He registers as a threat before he registers as a friend, like Michael used to, before Castiel was taught to believe otherwise. 

Castiel and Dean depart into the indifferent South Dakota September fog far too soon after they’d arrived. Castiel watches as Dean steals a car, and as they drive off in it he looks out the window, observing the people strolling by on the sidewalks, the other cars on the road, the shops they see once they’ve driven far enough from Bobby’s isolation. It’s all so chaotic and messy, out of formation—alien to Castiel.

Eventually, Dean notices Castiel’s interest in their surroundings. His hands are loose on the steering wheel when Castiel turns to look, startled by his words, and his eyes are steadily focused on the road before them. “What do you think of it?”

Castiel tilts his head. “Think of what?”

Dean rolls his eyes. Castiel takes mental notes; the motion will likely be helpful to emulate. “All this. The world. You look like you’re seein’ it for the first time.”

Castiel isn’t sure whether or not to take offense. “It is not,” he informs Dean, settling for a neutral response. “It’s just been a long time.”

“Oh.” Dean taps some tune out on the wheel with his fingers, hitting high notes foreign to Castiel. “Huh. They keep you cooped up in Heaven?”

Castiel wisely shuts down and returns to staring out the car window. “I suppose,” he replies vaguely. 

From beside him, Dean scoffs. “‘I suppose,’” he echoes rudely. “How long’d you say you’ve been gone? You sure talk like it’s been a thousand years. Tell you what, I’ll bring you around to look at somethin’, see if you can pick something up from people, drop that Plague doctor attitude.”

“Plague,” Castiel thinks aloud. “Yes. That sounds familiar.”

Dean ignores him. After a few moments of silence, he fiddles with something between them, and music fills the car. Castiel’s never heard anything like it, but, given time, he thinks he might be able to grow fond of it.

Turns out, Dean’s words weren’t empty. Castiel figures that bluntness is a particular skill of his, unlike many other humans.

“I thought you’d forgotten our conversation,” Castiel states frankly, but his eyes are not on Dean. They’re on the layers of earth before him, one atop another, bones and long-fossilized ligaments in the mesh of the colossal stones, the boulders almost breathing. The South Dakota sun bakes the topmost layers to egg-boiling temperature but is pleasantly warm on Castiel’s incorporeal feathers.

Dean scoffs from somewhere behind him. “It’s not a big deal, man,” he says. “I told you I’d take you somewhere, and it was just on the way to Illinois.”

Castiel is fairly sure this is false, or at least a slight fabrication, but he doesn’t say a word, because—because what does it matter how he’d gotten here, now that he’s looking over the crest of a dune and out at this ancient place?

“The law of superposition,” he says, remembering something as he stares out over Badlands National Park. The boulders are scraggly and rugged near the top, but below are layers of old magma—Castiel can taste it in the wind, the molecules of ancient volcanic eruptions, of prehistoric carcasses, carbon and marsh and roots and teeth.

“What’s that mean?” Dean asks, stepping up beside him. 

The sun climbs over the lowest ridge in the near distance. The color of it dapples the edges of this portion of the world that Castiel has, for all his thousands of years, failed to admire. It smells like oxygen, nitrogen; in the human sense it would be clear and fresh, but to Castiel it is crowded, every dead and dying thing clear to him, every sensation ever felt here, be it pain or fear or fondness. 

The wind picks up, and Castiel, thoughtless, flits his wing invisibly around the human who’d brought him here, remembering in a wave of clarity that humans can get cold. 

He gestures at the layers with an arm, holding his wing effortlessly outward. “The young shall bury the old,” he answers as best he can, echoing an older brother a long time ago. Was it Gabriel? Or, worse, was it Lucifer? A strange signature hovers in the air, and Castiel wonders which angel did this, which carved out this slice of world with some ancient carnage, an artist’s touch, wonders if it’s the same brothers who’ve long since been pitted against each other.

Wait. Is it blasphemy, to think so? Pitted against, Castiel had thought, and, oh, Father, what is he doing—

He tears his wing back with such force that it actually stirs up a slight breeze. Dean looks around himself as if bewildered and Castiel turns half away from him, but not away, never away from the view. 

“Thank you,” is all he says, after a moment. He thinks he should’ve been kinder, in the days before. But it’s his divine mission to be firm.

Where does firmness become cruelty? he wonders, looking out over the rocks. Where does loyalty become rebellion? Where, Father, Creator, Lord, he asks the souls of the hominids who once died here, hoping to find a trace of God in their deserted and eternal confusion, where in the world does introspection become blasphemy?

He searches for that signature again, picking his way through every other sense and atom and element to find the remnants of the grace of the angel who did this. 

It comes to him with all the force of the disaster he can still sense the remnants of here, the catastrophe which killed those great reptiles millions upon millions of years ago. Michael, the rocks read, under all the rest of it. Michael, the oldest; Michael, the most loyal, the commander, the fiercest of them, God’s soldier, his blade.

Michael, once an artist, it seems.

For the entire walk back to Dean’s car, he mulls it over, never saying another word. Father, he thinks over and over again, half a prayer, what have we become? 

“I have something I wish to tell you,” Castiel says, once they’re back on the road.

Dean blinks and looks over at him, eyes briefly departing from the road. “What?” he asks, gruff but not insincere.

Castiel hesitates. “The reason I was sent to revive you,” he continues haltingly at last. “It wasn’t just to save a hunter.”

Dean seems prepared to make a quip, but when he glimpses Castiel’s grim expression, his wittiness melts back into whatever soft but armed place in him that it had sheltered in for—how long was he tortured? Thirty, forty years? 

Castiel shifts uncomfortably in the silence. “You have a destiny,” he says, and nothing else.

“Yeah, I think I got that,” Dean retorts, but it’s not a snap—it’s too resigned. “Care to clarify?”

“You are to be,” Castiel hesitates again, strangely pained, “the Sword of Michael.”

Dean squints at him, flippant, but his knuckles are white around the wheel. “The hell does that mean?”

“Michael is my oldest brother. He’s—rash, somewhat single-minded, and his Sword—that’s what his vessel is to be called.”

“His vessel?”

Castiel forgot how oblivious humans are to the workings of angels. “In order to walk this plane, angels must to possess someone.”

Perhaps he’s gotten soft, secure in his and Dean’s fragile camaraderie, but in any case it startles Castiel badly when Dean slams the brakes. The wheels of his borrowed car screech on the asphalt, and at first Castiel searches for a threat, fingers on the blade up his sleeve. He finds none.

There’s no one behind them, no one in front. No animal, no obstacle. Castiel’s heart is slightly faster than normal. He whirls in his seat to glare at Dean, intending to demand answers.

And finds a demon blade wielded uncomfortably close to his throat.

Castiel resists the urge to swat it away. Despite its proficiency in killing demons, there’s nothing it can do against him; still, he reigns himself in enough to humor Dean, and tolerates the blade as long as it’s not directly against his skin.

“What?” he snaps, just barely dialing down the impatience in his voice.

“You possessed someone?” Dean spits.

Castiel pauses. To word it like that—Dean has clearly misunderstood something. “Yes,” he tries to clear up, “but an angel must be given their vessel’s consent—”

Dean leans over the console between them, and the blade just barely brushes against Castiel’s neck, like a dull guillotine. It itches ferociously at something deep in Castiel, despite the blade’s harmlessness. “Yeah, and who did you take, huh? What’s the name of this guy you’ve been piggybacking?”

Castiel frowns. Tolerating, always tolerating. “Jimmy,” he says. “Jimmy Novak.”

Something glitters in Dean’s eyes, there and gone. Castiel thinks it looks an awful lot like betrayal. “Let him go. Let him go, right now.”

“That would be against my mission parameters,” Castiel explains patiently. “I’m supposed to stay by your side—”

“I don’t give a fuck about your mission,” Dean snaps. The blade retreats just an inch as he swipes his unarmed hand down his face, hiding something there, but Castiel’s too unpracticed in deciphering emotion to read it. “I thought you were—figures, I guess. Figures you’re no better than a demon.”

Something swells in Castiel’s chest, something like wrath, at the mere suggestion. “I am nothing like a demon,” he snarls. “Angels must be given explicit permission—”

“And I’m sure you have plenty of ways of tricking people into giving it,” Dean interrupts sardonically. The demon blade approaches again, close enough to prick Castiel’s skin if it was capable, and Castiel snaps. 

He swats the blade away with slightly too much force, no doubt bruising Dean’s arm, and leans forward enough that Dean, for his part, must shift back. “I am not like those scum in Hell who tortured you,” Castiel says. “You’re misunderstanding. This vessel—he’s a religious man. He thought my arrival was a miracle, my suggestion of possession an honor, and knowing what I meant to do on this plane gave him pride. He wanted this.”

Dean, who looks just about ready to jab the blade in Castiel’s throat, damn the consequences, blinks. He draws back, settling in his seat. Castiel is glad that they’re on something of a backroad, because otherwise they likely would’ve been struck by another vehicle by now. “So—he’s okay with it. Through and through,” Dean clarifies.

“Yes,” Castiel replies, exasperated. 

Dean’s jaw tenses. “Okay.” He looks forward, at the road, and shifts the car into gear. “Okay.”

They drive a few moments in silence before Dean asks, hesitantly, “What does your brother want me for?”

Something in Castiel rankles at the term brother—it’s not something he and Michael have been for a long, long time. But he supposes that’s his mistake for introducing Michael as such. “With you as his vessel, he plans to fight Lucifer.”

“Wait,” Dean says to the road ahead, “Lucifer? The devil?”

“Yes,” Castiel replies simply, then sighs. “My other older brother.”

“All right,” Dean mumbles to himself, taking it all in stride. Castiel finds himself admiring his resilience, just a little. “Let me—we’ll go find Sam, then. We just gotta find Sam, and then we’ll figure it out together.”

Castiel wonders whether or not he is included in that together. He is, after all, the kin of the enemy.

And Sam’s name reminds him of another secret, a far more sinister one. Castiel lifts his chin, stares out the car window again, remembering the dichotomy of Michael’s signature in that national park and the military commander back in Heaven. Dean speaks of Sam fondly, but Castiel must be on his guard. If Sam’s truly meant to follow the destiny provided to him as Dean is meant to follow his—

Castiel doesn’t think he’ll ever understand the dedication in Dean’s eyes when he speaks of Sam. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to fully decipher the feeling deep in his expression, something like protectiveness and just barely short of some childish love, the kind of adoration one feels for a best friend. 

But he does understand the devastation he’s sure will come when Dean learns of the secret Castiel refuses to tell him. That, Castiel knows well—after all, his family’s been tearing itself apart for millennia.

He just hopes Dean won’t blame him for keeping this tentative truce between them, savoring it for another moment or three before it inevitably crumbles under the massive opposing forces of Michael and Lucifer.

Peering out the window at the deep darkness of a night long ago fallen, Castiel grits his teeth and scolds himself for the attachment he feels toward this strange, violent human he’s been tasked with.

Chapter Text

They arrive at the address it took Dean thirty minutes and two false identities to find in the rusty tailend of dusk. Cas has been quiet for hours, and Dean has been trying not to look at him—not just because of their little spat yesterday, but also because the one glance he had risked had been—

Well, he’s afraid to be caught staring. But it’s one thing to read about angels in books, and an entire other thing to witness one, face feathered by a brilliant setting sun, eyes set in a look Dean knows to be ancient and pensive, the blueness of them like a memory, some half-forgotten dream. 

Dean, he’s had to scold himself more than once, pull yourself together. Guys can’t be pretty.

“Hey,” he murmurs to an unmoving Cas once he’s parked the stolen car, sorely missing Baby. “We’re here.”

The angel looks at him. Blinks slowly. “Yes.”

Dean shifts awkwardly in his seat, and chalks it up to discomfort under the scrutiny of that stare. Damn, those eyes. He bites down on his tongue for a moment before he speaks. “You gonna come in…?”

Cas squints. “Of course,” he says, like it’s in any way obvious. Maybe it is, given that he hasn’t taken his eyes off of Dean since he resurrected him—Dean’s fairly sure he’s even been watching him sleep. 

He gets up, opens the door, steps outside. The chilly air bites, and Dean misses his jacket. His cache a few hours from Bobby’s place only held the hunting essentials, guns and knives and holy water, none of it of any real sentimental value. 

Cas mimics him and circles around the car without a pause at the temperature. Dean crosses his arms and pretend he isn’t near shivering. “All right, but I’m warning you to stay back,” Dean tells him as he leads the way to the door of the motel Sam’s evidently been staying at for the last few days. “Actually this time.”

Cas doesn’t give any visible response to Dean’s reproachful look. 

Dean swings open the door and moves toward the elevator,, ignoring the clerk. Cas seems briefly awed by the upward movement of the elevator and Dean, to his own surprise, must conceal his amused smile by turning away a fraction, pretending to look for something in his pocket.

“Is this,” Cas begins, then hesitates. The elevator hums dully, the numbers above the door flicking in and out of illumination. “Is this a common resting place for humans?”

Dean snorts. “You keep talking like that, peoole’re gonna think I’m escorting some kind’a alien. But yeah. People stay here for a night most’a the time, and then move on.”

“But Sam has been here…longer?” Cas asks slowly.

“Dude,” Dean says just as the elevator dings and the doors open. He steps out, cutting his eyes skeptically at Cas, who remains directly at his side. “Are you suspicious of my brother? You’ve never even met ’im.”

Cas evidently doesn’t like this topic of conversation. His lips thin, and he doesn’t say anything else. 

Dean rolls his eyes and walks down the long, dark hallway, eyeing the room numbers. Sammy really shelled out on this one, he muses, wondering at the multiple floors and the clean doors of the place. Hell, even the carpet’s unstained. 

Oh, Dean realizes, pausing only briefly. He smiles a little. He’s got company.

Cas stops walking beside him. “What?” 

“Nothin’,” Dean lies easily, spying Sam’s room number near the end of the hall. “Just—wait here, okay? Seriously.” 

Cas squints, then stands still, almost eerily so, by the door Dean pointed at. Like a dog told to stay. 

Dean walks up to the door, lifts a fist, but finds himself freezing for just a moment. Less than a minute—a fraction of his time in Hell. But, damn, it feels so much longer. What is he even meant to say? Nervousness rises up in him, closing up his throat, and he shoves it firmly down. Come on, an internal voice just like his father’s chides. Don’t be a pussy.

He knocks.

There’s a code concealed in it. Once, pause, twice, thrice. Their old childhood encryption. It’s me, it means, through any door, across any distance. Dean can almost imagine a little Sammy opening the door, slightly gap-toothed, skinny, a misfit. The features are a little blurry, sure, after all these years, but it’s undeniably Sammy. Yet that’s not who he sees when the lock clicks open and the door swings inward.

Instead, it’s Sam, looking just like the last time Dean saw him. 

The first thing he does, of course, is point a gun at him. Dean figures it’s a damn hunter’s housewarming at this point.

He holds his hands up easily, gently, and smiles. “Heya, Sammy,” he greets, allowing himself, for once, to express some fondness in his voice. Dad’s internal voice can go chug bleach for all he cares right now.

A girl comes up behind Sam, oddly unconcerned by the sight of the gun, and peers out from behind his elbow. She’s pretty, but there’s something in her face—Dean’s reminded ever so slightly of Yellow Eyes.

Sam gestures to the interior of the room with his gun, and Dean allows himself to be led inside, distracted by any and all thoughts of Hell for just a single whimsical moment by the sight of his little brother’s face.

The door shuts with a final click and Dean is glad not to see any signs of Cas. Seems like he’s finally decided to trust Dean’s judgment on his own family.

Sam tosses some holy water on him when Dean’s back is turned. “Been through this routine already with Bobby, Sammy,” Dean says, still unable to wipe the grin off his face. The girl eyes him with no small degree of disgust when he turns and looks at the pair of them—his brother and his brother’s hookup. Oh, how times have changed. 

Sam looks stricken. “Bobby?”

Dean winces. “I told him not to call ahead. I figured you wouldn’t want to hear about this over the phone. And, hey, who’s this? She one of us?” 

At this, Sam seems to withhold some expression of shame. Dean finds that though he looks the same as he did when Dean last saw him, that doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t better at hiding those looks on his face Dean’s been fluent in for decades. It’s hard, now, to tell exactly what Sam’s thinking. “No, she’s, uh,” Sam tries, hesitates, conceals an expression, reroutes, “It doesn’t matter, Dean. It’s—you’re—how?”

“It’s complicated, Sammy,” Dean replies honestly, slumping a fraction in relief. “C’mon, put the gun away. I’ll tell you all about it. Just—y’know.” He gestures vaguely at the girl. “If you don’t mind,” he adds, trying for politeness.

The girl, despite her audible scoff, seems to agree with him. “Yeah, I’m outta here, Sam,” she says, grabbing her coat from the motel bed. “Call me.”

Sam nods, but doesn’t take his eyes off of Dean, even as the girl disappears out the door.

Dean sighs and sits on the bed. He rubs his eyes with two fingers. “C’mon, Sammy, it’s me. Put the damn gun away.”

Sam hesitates, then does as he’s told. He sits across from Dean, in the only chair in the place. His posture’s just as bad as it’s always been, but his hair’s slightly longer, and Dean remembers afternoons spent trying to cut his hair with scissors back when Dad didn’t come home for days and Sam had to show up for school. He smiles at the thought; Sam continues to frown. “I’m glad to see you, Dean,” he begins, “I really am, but—but I’ve been trying to find you for—how are you—?”

Dean sighs and shouts, “Cas!” 

In less than a second, the angel is at his shoulder, looking slightly miffed, likely about being called to heel like a pet. Dean smirks a little and hides it in his hands. 

“Shit.” Sam scrambles too stand, to reach for his gun, and Dean actually does snort now at Cas’s visible bewilderment. He pauses, then questioningly puts his hands up, like he’s not quite sure if he’s doing the right thing. 

Dean pats the bed next to him, and Cas, eyeing Sam, sits. His hands drop to somewhere near his sleeve, and Dean’s met enough killers in his time to know there’s a blade hidden in there somewhere, undetectable. Probably an angel thing. 

“At ease, Sammy, he’s a friend,” Dean reassures, hoping against hope that his voice sounds convincing enough to disarm his brother, even though he himself is not entirely sure yet of his own words. 

“What is he,” Sam snaps, not a question. He sits down again with a huff, but the gun doesn’t leave his hand, pointed directly at Cas.

“He’s—”

“I’m an angel,” Cas snaps, and Sam visibly jumps at the unexpectedly low register of his voice, “and I am perfectly capable of speaking for myself.”

Sam’s knuckles are white around the gun. His eyes are wide when they seek Dean’s. “Is he really—?”

Dean rolls his eyes. He knows where this is going.

At Dean’s lack of protest, Sam stands so abruptly his chair shifts back several inches, and holds his hand out to Cas, who looks at it with distinct distaste. “Hey. Uh. Hello. I’m Sam. Um, Winchester. I mean, you would know, but—” He pushes his hand forward a little more emphatically, and Dean, having gotten to know how to read Cas a little better over the last day or two of traveling, watches him battle the urge to slap Sam’s hand away. “Um, sorry,” Sam apologizes, taking his hand back and glancing at Dean helplessly.

He looks just a little heartbroken. Dean bites his tongue. “Cas, you’re supposed to shake,” he grumbles. 

“I’m aware,” Cas grumbles, which was predictable but the last thing Dean wanted to hear. He’s learned that Cas doesn’t really like Sam, for whatever strange heavenly reason, going by his conspicuous silences and expressions whenever Dean brings Sam up, and his apparent suspicion when they walked into this building. 

Sam steps back, sits down in his chair, looks—looks sad, of all things. “‘Cas’?” he asks politely. 

When Cas doesn’t even move to respond, sullenly glaring at the carpet, Dean actually leans forward and kicks him. Cas’s head rears up like an offended horse and then he scoffs, loud and clear. Sammy’s ears turn a little red around the edges and he ducks like he always did when he was mocked in school. “Short for Castiel,” Cas snaps shortly.

“Hey, man, don’t be an asshole,” Dean nearly snarls. “He’s my brother. You hang around me, you can’t treat him like shit.”

“Oh, I can’t?” Cas mocks. Dean’s surprised to see the near-literal blaze in his eyes when Cas meets his. “You—heaven needs you. But your brother? At best, he’s an abomination. He’s everything heaven has ever wanted to obliterate from the surface of the earth, and you expect me to—what? Respect him?”

Is all this about Yellow Eyes? Seems a little much, in Dean’s opinion.

Dean lunges to his feet. “Yeah, Cas, I do. Y’know why? Because if you need me so much, you’ll treat him just like you treat me, no damn less. Or I might just turn a blind eye to your family drama.”

Cas looks just about ready to punch Dean’s teeth in, but he holds back. Standing over an angel in a shitty motel room, Dean feels anything but powerful, and Cas seems to feel the same. Finally, Dean steps away, clearing the path to the door, and Cas takes his cue to retreat, just barely slamming it behind him as he goes.

“Sorry, Sammy,” Dean says once Cas is gone. He sits on the bed again, tenser than before. “Thought he lost that stick up his ass on the way here. Don’t listen to him, he’ll warm up to you eventually.”

“It’s okay,” Sam assures him with a weak smile, and Dean feels utterly at a loss as Sammy’s arm comes up to wipe his eyes with his sleeve, just once. “He’s right.”

“No, the fuck he ain’t,” Dean snaps. He wishes there was something, anything to fight in the room—he’s always preferred the physically battles, the breaking of ribs and feel of bone on bone, never tears on his little brother’s cheeks. “He’s never been more wrong.”

“He’s an angel.”

“He’s an asshole, is what he is,” Dean argues. “Come on, Sammy. Don’t listen to him.” He wishes he could bring up Hell, if only to make Sam’s screw-ups look smaller; he hopes that Sam doesn’t take any of what Cas said to heart. “Who was that girl?” Dean asks, smiling more than a little slyly. 

“Oh, Ru—uh,” Sam tries, “she was, uh—”

Dean chalks up his brother’s weirdness to awkwardness and kindly rescues him. “All right. You can tell me all about it later, man. But first—how do beers sound?”

Sam scoffs a little but doesn’t argue, and soon he’s whisked out the door, Dean at his side. 

“Oh, by the way,” Dean begins once they’re in the elevator, as if he could have possibly ever forgotten, “where’s my Baby’s keys?”

Sam rolls his eyes when he passes them over, and Dean pumps a fist when he isn’t looking, proud that through the past forty or so years, his big brother skills haven’t rusted a bit.

Chapter Text

Damn this mission. 

The human, he’s impossible. Arrogant and impulsive and ape-like. Castiel should have listened to his siblings when they told him that his task was burden, not a gift. But Castiel had thought—given that he isn’t some office angel, he’s a warrior—that God would show him some favor. Would show him something.

All Castiel has been shown is the true and immense hubris of human beings. How dare the Sword defend Lucifer’s vessel! How dare he take his side when at that very moment there hung a stench in the air, a stinking whiff of demon blood—

How hideous a creature that vessel is. Castiel thinks Heaven ought to have separated the Sword and his brother a long, long time ago. 

And now it’s somehow his problem. He scoffs in the alley beside the damn hotel, kicking a rock hard enough to chip the wall it collides with. Castiel’s vessel’s knuckles are white, his two perfect rows of teeth exerting the force of a soldier of God upon each other. He wishes he could break something, kick and punch and tear down this whole ugly American town, but he cannot so thoughtlessly destroy any of his father’s grand Creation. No, he must settle with the rock and the wall. 

He hears the humans walk out, and, after a moment, he dares to peer out of his alleyway. The Winchesters are heading toward Dean’s—the Sword’s—car. 

He needs to follow them. He knows that. But surely, if they’re no insistent, they can handle themselves for a few hours? Castiel needs a moment away from the Sword’s primitive babbling, his—what is it that his brothers say? Castiel needs a break from the ape he was tasked with. Yes, Castiel is sick of it, and rightfully so.

Still, a strange human feeling is thick in his chest. He almost chalks it up to the last vestiges of his vessel, still hopelessly hanging onto the threads of Castiel’s powerful consciousness, but it’s too deep and affecting to be so. It remains persistent, even as the Sword’s car pulls away. Castiel has felt it once or twice, the first time on Earth, the second in Heaven when his grace was still weak and he was young enough to horseplay with his brothers. It’s like the remnants of a good dream, he thinks, with a bitter aftertaste—on Earth he’d felt a weaker version when overlooking Egypt, those stunning pyramids and written language and beautiful works of humanity etched in the thickest rock ever formed by God, a memory to last a billion years, fossils with the same half-life as the universe.

What could it be? What had he felt for humanity and its perseverance, and, before, what had he felt for his brothers?

Fondness.

God help me, Castiel prays briefly once the revelation comes to him, knowing in his heart that that word is the truest description of his predicament in all known language. Heart, he repeats to himself bewilderedly—who in Heaven had ever pretended to have anything of a heart? 

He turns away from the parking lot, resolving to leave the Winchesters to their own devices for the time being. Surely they can handle a few hours without Castiel’s monitoring eye.

Something is wrong. 

Castiel, despite his earlier rebellious mood, has parked himself firmly outside of the bar Sam and Dean are catching up in. It’s a thin compromise; he’s watching people go by, eyes not focused on his mission, but his ears are reserved solely for the Winchesters.

The sounds of the streets don’t bother him. It’s energy, all of it; he can bend it to his will as he sees fit. And to Castiel, the only sound that matters in the world, however much he hates that fact at times, are the breaths of the Sword.

So Castiel obviously hears when Sam leaves to use the restroom, but he doesn’t think anything of it. He lets his hearing hone in on Dean, on his heartbeat, the slightly arrhythmic pulsing of a soul that’s gone to Hell and come back changed. And Castiel finds himself wishing it was him who Dean wanted to speak to, to order drinks for and laugh with, not the rotten vessel of Lucifer.

He feels rather than sees Dean become anxious, and Castiel expands his senses, curious and apprehensive as to what could worry a hunter of Dean’s caliber so much in a matter of moments. There’s certainly no one near him, no foe, and zero poison in his drink—nothing to induce distress.

And then Castiel realizes, after a long moment during which Dean stands and moves toward the restrooms: that’s precisely the problem.

Sam has been gone for too long. 

Immediately, Castiel flies into the bar, appearing suddenly just in front of the restroom door, inches from Dean.

Dean hurries to step back. Castiel blinks at the redness on his face, wonders whether or not he’s intoxicated. Then the Sword’s posture stiffens, and his anger returns, all the righteous fury from the hotel, twice the protectiveness. He steps in even closer and shoves Castiel against the door in their little alcove, luckily free of any passerby. 

“Did you do something to him?” Dean snarls close to Castiel’s ear.

Castiel is too surprised to push him back. “No,” he replies stiffly. His head tilts to one side involuntarily, a tick he’s maintained in all of his vessels. “That is not my mission.”

Dean scoffs harshly and tries to push Castiel to the side in order to get past him, but Castiel doesn’t budge an inch. 

“Let me go in first,” Castiel says. He frames it as a request, but going by the look in Dean’s eyes, he’s well aware it’s anything but.

“No,” Dean snaps, shoving Castiel with even more fervor. “You—what if it’s an angel? Huh? How can I count on you to help him?”

Castiel blinks. “His demise is not my mission,” he repeats blankly.

“Well, neither is his protection.”

Castiel squints, shrugs. “I’m impervious to most attacks. On the other hand, I understand humans to be relatively fragile. It’s only common sense that I should enter  before you.”

Dean bristles, but leans back. His forearm is across Castiel’s collarbone, as if there’s any structure in his human body capable of overpowering an angel. Castiel, of course, humors him. “Why would you do that?” Dean demands, and, when it becomes clear that Castiel doesn’t understand, elaborates, “Help Sam. You hate him.”

“I’m supposed to protect the Sword,” Castiel explains haltingly, “at any cost. Protecting your brother is, in a way, protecting you.”

It’s an excuse, and a thin one, at that. Why is Castiel helping? It must have something to do with Dean’s protectiveness—it must be rubbing off on Castiel. There’s no other explanation. Why save the future vessel of Lucifer? Castiel tries to step back in thought, and finds himself leaning back into the hard wood of the door. Oddly, he feels trapped. Interrogated.

He grits his teeth. “We must hurry,” he deflects. “Your brother has been gone for a while.”

Dean stares at him, something behind his eyes working in a way similar to an old machine. And then he nods briskly and retreats. 

Castiel almost finds himself smiling at him for his trust, and must bite his tongue to refrain. God, what is he becoming? Reassuring apes, offering to interfere with the affairs of Earth, doubting himself—

He whirls on his heel the second he’s let go of and pushes open the restroom door. It’s a single room, so Castiel snaps the steel lock as he pushes past, ensuring that his own body shields Dean’s from any hostiles in the room.

The first thing Castiel realizes is that it’s cold. 

The mirrors are frozen over, the water from the sinks turned to ice. Castiel hears Dean let out a breath and knows it emerges as mist from his mouth. 

Sam is on the far side of the room, wrestling with another human, only—

“Shit,” Dean swears, and runs to the sinks. Castiel moves toward the two humans clawing at each other on the ground, and reaches to fling the second one back, but his hand vanishes right through. He frowns. “Ghost, Cas,” he hears behind him, and he turns just as a portion of the sink is flung at him. 

He catches it as his brothers would catch a blade. It’s a pipe, an iron one. He squints at Dean, then at Sam—being choked by the enraged spirit—and then at the ghost. He spins the pipe in his hand for optimal grip and then swings.

He puts enough force behind it to pulverize a human, but all it does to the ghost is make it hiss and vanish. Castiel has never seen a ghost before. He stares at the pipe in his hand, wondering if it had been warded in the moment Dean had taken by the sinks. How is that possible?

Dean rushes by and helps Sam up. Castiel casts a brief glance at him, eyeing the forming bruise on his throat, and then, sighing, drops his pipe. He stretches a hand out.

Sam tracks his hand up to his face, and shifts back out of Castiel’s arm’s reach. Castiel frowns when Dean shoves himself bodily between them, glaring at Castiel for all the world like he just viciously attacked the younger Winchester.

“I was trying to heal him,” Castiel explains himself, feeling as though his intentions were lost in translation somewhere. 

Dean eyes him up and down like an enemy. The silence of the restroom hangs over them, a leaden weight. The light above the sinks casts Castiel’s silhouette on Sam, who peers out from behind Dean like a little kid who’s been frightened. Castiel steps back. 

“I won’t hurt your brother,” he tells Dean, because it’s still difficult to look at Sam without seeing the future vessel of Castiel’s greatest enemy. “I’m here to help you. Both of you.”

It’s an intentional mistranslation of his orders. Heaven would show him unimaginable shame for such a thing. He’s only here to help the Sword, to hell with the other one. But Castiel has found that to help the Sword, he must help everyone else also. 

A martyr. Castiel’s familiar with his kind. 

But, no, that’s wrong. Ape, species, kind. These are no animals in front of Castiel. In fact, he sees a bit of his own brothers in them, their steadfastness and stubbornness, their loyalty. Values the angels have been telling Castiel humans are incapable of possessing for his entire life. Yet here they are, and he’s faced with the idea—the traitorous, frightful idea—that perhaps Heaven has been lying to him.

Dean shifts uneasily, as if he’s still a teenager hiding his younger brother from monsters, protecting him from the dark. There’s a part of his soul, if Castiel squints past the blemishes Hell left and the brutal way Dean was raised, that is brighter than any Castiel’s ever seen. 

He’s made a mistake, he realizes. A grave one. Because these humans seem to be—God forgive him—just as intelligent and courageous and beautiful as any angel Castiel has ever known.

“Please,” he murmurs, his own version of sorry.

It seems to be enough, because without another word, Dean shifts to the side, allowing Castiel a view of his brother. The bruises are thick, likely like a physical weight on Sam’s throat. Phantom hands. 

Castiel steps forward, places a hand on Sam’s shoulder, and watches with satisfaction as the bruises seal up and disappear altogether.

“Thanks,” Sam says, once Castiel has stepped back. His hand moves up to touch his neck, feeling for damage and finding none. Castiel smiles thinly but sincerely at him. 

A tiny spark, previously absent in Sam’s eyes, wells up again. Castiel has seen it before, an immeasurable number of times; it’s faith. Plain and simple and familiar. Castiel wonders how in the world he’d delighted at the death of that spark only hours earlier. This is no animal looking back at him.

“All right,” Dean interrupts, seeming a little miffed. Castiel turns to him, lets the brightness of his soul bathe him pleasantly, warming him from the inside out. “So. Is it just me, or was that Agent Henrikson?”

Chapter Text

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near—

“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . .”

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“Then it has done you no good at all!”

“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.” And then he added: “Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

— The Little Prince

They end up back at Bobby’s.

Turns out, the ghosts aren’t ghosts at all; they’re Witnesses. Something of Lilith’s design, Dean’s sure, though he’s not sure precisely why. It takes a spell to kill them, the ingredients of which Dean has seen before in the back of Bobby’s pantry, stuffed in the deepest crevices of the lonely life he lives here. Cheap magic, so much so that Dean wonders if it’ll even work, or if for the rest of his life there will linger behind him Agent Henrikson and his formidable scowl, the immense weight of his blame. 

It’s not the worst of Dean’s ghosts to be haunted for eternity by.

Dean tracks Cas’s eyes when Bobby mixes the spell. He seems immersed in his surroundings, like he’s busy reading a good book. “Hey,” Dean calls, tossing him an iron rod, “pull your damn weight, man.”

Cas blinks. The iron looks strange in his hand, like he’s used to lighter weapons. The sparse lighting in the cabin casts his shadow behind him, and the power thrumming from the spell seems to reflect off of his shoulders, forming a feathery outline behind his back. It looks like a mistake, a misstroke in the tapestry of their background, a poorly-developed photograph. Sam actually hesitates while fighting Meg—the real, human Meg, the one they left broken at the base of a building, the one they stabbed to death in the end—to look. Cas seems oblivious.

“Apologies,” is all he says, and when he reaches to swing the rod at one of the girls haunting Bobby, the wings on the wall follow him, flaring elegantly. It’s strange to think that they’ve always been there, that they never left, no matter that Dean couldn’t see them. He thinks of the strange wind currents around his back when they were at the canyons, on the way to Sam.

A scraping sound distracts him from his wondering. Sam is pinned behind a table, back to the wall, Meg across from him with a snarl on her face. She reminds Dean strikingly of the demon that possessed her, and Dean wonders if he’s seeing things or if he’s not alone in being changed irreparably by the touch of a demon. He’s figured, by now, that there’s no real means of recovery, but it’s a whole other thing to see it playing on Meg’s face, the torment turned into a torrent of rage.

It’s not really her, he tries, wishing he could convince himself of that. It’s a shadow of her, like Cas’s wings. She’s only a Witness, nothing more.

It doesn’t help.

Satisfied with her treatment of Sam, Meg turns on Cas. Dean swallows an unnecessary warning when Cas flashes a wing out, throwing wind all over the place with such ferocity that it actually rattles the walls. Meg looks at him like he’s a gnat under her shoe, and that’s how Dean knows she’s not really human, nor has she ever been; this thing is far too warped to be a spirit. Any human or human-adjacent thing would be awed to fear by the sight, but Meg does not pause.

She lunges at him.

Cas seems briefly surprised by this, and in a move Dean recognizes to be reflexive, he pulls a blade from his sleeve. It’s long, sleek, and silvery. Dean wonders what it’s for, and what he could do to get his hands on it.

In any case, when he swipes at the ghost, it slides right through her. Dean yells, “Iron, Cas!” and revels in the look Cas levels him with, a scathing glare that Dean thrives under. 

“Hurry, Bobby,” he calls, rushing over to Sam to rescue him from the table. Just as Sam’s freed, one of the girls throws a book at Dean, and he just barely ducks in time. A pressure lands on his throat, and he realizes that the book was a distraction too late when the other girl pushes him up against the book case, too powerful to be anything even vaguely natural. His iron weapon is thrown from his hand, and Sammy is attacked by the other girl.

“Bobby!” Dean chokes around the girl’s hand. He wonders why Bobby is haunted by these girls, of all people. Why not his wife? Then again, Bobby was always especially miserable after losing a child he couldn’t save. Maybe it hits a deeper nerve, or once did, knowing that Dean, something of a son of his, was dead. But Dean isn’t, not anymore. And he’s determined to never be again, not until he decides it’s time.

“I’m working on it!” Bobby shouts back, and the girl trying to kill Dean jerks and looks at him like he just slaughtered her sister. Bobby flinches like someone just shot at him, like there’s an assault rifle waving in his face.

Dean feels himself become light-headed, his fingers slipping and his legs becoming deadweight. Shit, he snaps internally, mostly because he isn’t sure he can push it past his throat out loud. His windpipe aches, and his head pounds something fierce. 

At last, the girl is swiped into thin air by something iron, and Dean catches himself with his hands on the discarded table before looking up, expecting Sammy’s face above his own.

But it isn’t Sammy. It’s Cas. Cas, who looks him over—Cas, who offers him his hand.

Dean actually takes it this time. 

“Thanks,” he croaks after a moment, reaching up and wincing when he feels his own tender neck. He remembers the consequences of injuries like this well, and didn’t miss them one bit. He’s going to have to speak minimally for some time, a day or two at least. He scowls. 

Cas doesn’t turn away as Dean expects him to. Instead, he stands before him, just looking. Despite the firelight and the faint morning blush in the dawn sky, drifting through the blinds in stripes, Cas’s eyes are the brightest things in the room. Dean’s glare deepens. “What, is there somethin’ on my face?” he snaps.

Cas squints, opens his mouth, seems to think better or it, and turns away. He stands protectively in front of Dean when the other girl rushes them, enraged at the harm brought to her sister. Cas drives her off with a single swing of the rod and moves to Bobby in the salt circle once Dean’s sufficiently recovered, peering over his shoulder into the bowl. 

He seems to implicitly expect Dean to follow him. Dean makes a point of not doing so, instead moving to Sammy, who’s been freed of the grip of the little girl only to be met with Henrikson again. 

“All right,” Bobby calls to them, “it’s ready!”

Sam and Dean retreat a fraction, leaving the ghosts on the exterior of the salt circle, knowing they won’t have time to blow it away. Henrikson looks at Sam over Dean’s head, and his shout rises above the burning of the girls as Bobby chants the spell: “You killed me!”

Dean doesn’t have to turn to know that Sammy’s face is etched with remorse. He didn’t miss this part of living; the regret, the guilt, the ghosts that don’t fade at the touch of iron, that linger on Sammy’s shoulder, that should never have been there in the first place but persist in his head and can’t be slain by any means Dean knows. The battles he can’t fight for Sam are the worst of them all.

Meg halts in the sunlight as she burns. It casts her face in light, not a speck of blackness in her eyes, and suddenly Dean feels sorry for her, and hopes she’s going up instead of down.

When all’s said and done with the Witnesses, Bobby frowns down at a book as Sam and Dean pick up the toppled furniture. Cas stands by the fireplace, stoking the flames with his iron rod like he doesn’t have a single care in the world.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks Bobby while he puts the table formerly tossed at him back in its proper place. 

“Witnesses—they’re not…commonplace,” Bobby replies gradually. “If this was Lilith’s doing, I wonder what she’s aimin’ at.”

Cas looks up at this. “To break the seals, of course.”

Bobby startles like he forgot Cas was there. Dean beats him to the question. “What? ‘Seals’? Like, the animal?”

Cas scoffs and Dean rolls his eyes at his attitude. Seems like he’s taught him something, at least, if not how to blend in among human populations. Seriously, the guy always looks like a lost puppy. “No. The sixty-six seals. They’re—” He hesitates, glances at Sam for some reason. “They’re for freeing Lucifer.”

“Lucifer?” Dean and Sam snap at the same time. If Dean thought Alastair was bad—

“Yes,” Cas says, and frowns. “You might know him as the devil. Perhaps—”

“We know who that is, Cas,” Dean interrupts before Cas goes on some tangent or other about Biblical origins. No doubt he’s God’s personal preacher or whatever when he’s up in the clouds. “We thought he was—I don’t know, somewhere he can’t get out of!”

“I told you,” Cas replies stiffly, “that it is your purpose—”

Dean hurriedly cuts him off. “Yeah, okay. Lucifer. Yeah. That’s—well, how many seals has she broken already?”

Cas squints suspiciously at him, as does Sam. They know he’s hiding something, they just don’t know why, or—in Sam’s case—what. It’s just—you don’t come back from the dead, go to all that effort and effectively stage a revolt against the soul-damning business, only to tell your loved ones that there’s a chance you’ll go out as an archangel’s puppet, fighting Satan himself. He owes Sam some peace, at the very least. Maybe he’ll tell Bobby first.

“I’m not sure,” Cas says. “I’m not as in touch with Heaven as you all seem to assume, when I’m down on earth like this. I suppose she’s already broken two or three.”

“Out of sixty-six?” Sam asks, and is answered by a simple nod.

Seems this topic’s a sore one going by the tension in Cas’s shoulders, though Dean doubts Bobby or Sam even catch that. 

“So we need to stop her,” Sam decides, like it’s that easy. 

Cas actually snorts. Dean turns to him with wide eyes. “While it’s easy to say—”

“Was that a laugh, Castiel?” comes a scolding voice from the corner of the room, entrenched in shadow.

Dean whirls on his heel, pulling a gun as easily as lifting a limb of his own. He hears Sam bristle with the iron in his hand and Bobby drawing his shotgun. 

There’s a man in the shadows. When he steps out, Dean notes some things; firstly, that he appears to be unarmed, and secondly, that he called Cas Castiel.

This is not a man at all, Dean realizes. It’s another angel.

Immediately, Cas stiffens and moves a step closer so that he’s as close to the other angel as Dean is. Dean squints at him, thinking he looks a lot like a soldier confronted with his commanding officer. 

“Uriel,” Cas greets slightly too politely, and Dean realizes: that’s exactly what he is.

“I asked you a question, Castiel,” Uriel intones mildly. “Tell me: are you fraternizing with your charges?”

Charges? Dean wrinkles his nose as if confronted with a bad smell.

“Of course not,” Cas replies stiffly. His silvery blade has disappeared somewhere, and Dean wonders where he conceals it.

Uriel looks at him for a tense moment, and then chuckles a little himself. His laughter does nothing to ease the tension in Cas’s posture. “You know, that’s the first time I’ve heard that sound from you, Castiel,” he says, “in spite of all of Gabriel’s insufferable jesting when we were young. The human arrogance does astound, does it not?”

Cas can’t meet Dean’s eyes when he nods.

Dean wants, for a long moment, to kick him. He just barely refrains.

“And who the hell are you?” Bobby calls from behind them, the sound of his shotgun loading theatrical in the silence. 

Uriel turns to him with a look so chilling it’s as if he’s staring down his nose at a prisoner on death row. “Uriel,” he introduces briefly, like it’s not worth his time. “I’m sure you’ve gotten to know Castiel well enough by now, but unfortunately, he’s being called back.”

Dean opens his mouth, but it’s Cas to speaks first. “Called back? Uriel, my mission—”

“Your mission has not been very successful thus far,” Uriel interrupts. “Yes, the human is alive, but he’s just as unruly as ever, and seals have been broken under your watch. Tell me, would Michael be satisfied with your performance if it were to get back to him?”

Cas visibly pales.

“Worse, Heaven is concerned you’re becoming—attached,” Uriel says, like it’s the filthiest concept in the world. “To apes. How would Naomi receive this, I wonder.”

This actually makes Cas step back. 

“I asked you a question,” Uriel goes on after a moment.

“Not well,” Cas answers shortly.

“That’s right. So why don’t you come back with me?”

“I will work harder,” Cas promises, but by the rushed quality of his voice he knows it’s in vain. “The Sword will be prepared—”

“Not with you as the angel assigned to him, he won’t,” Uriel snaps.

Dean steps up, rage swirling in his gut and making his head feel thick. The bruises on his throat stretch when he talks. “If I have a say in it,” he snarls, and goes on too quickly for the angels to deny him, “I refuse to work with any angel but Cas.”

Uriel raises his eyebrow at Cas, and Cas winces. Shit. “Castiel,” Dean corrects himself. 

Uriel scoffs. “You don’t have a choice in the matter.”

“Sure I do,” Dean argues. “I saw that blade Castiel has. Long, silver—I’m sure you know it well. I’m also sure that it’s one of the only weapons in the world that can kill angels, am I right? Is that why you carry it? I’ve never seen anything like it before, but I’m sure—given enough time—I can steal it.” Dean steps close to Uriel, and feels Cas radiate nervous energy in the process. “Just as your goon gets comfortable down here, the second he doesn’t suspect a thing, I’ll take it from him, in the midst of battle maybe, and I’ll stab him through the heart. Maybe I’ll just fail to help him when it counts. It’s Castiel here, or a dead angel. How’s that for a choice?”

At this, Uriel glares at him like an adversary. At least the holier-than-thou attitude has all but vanished. “An angel never lets down their guard.”

“Everyone does,” Dean argues. “You know, I killed demons in Hell. They said the same thing. But everyone must turn their back, once in a while.”

Dean isn’t quite sure whether or not he’s bluffing, and if he’s capable of what he’s threatening in the first place. But he knows the conviction in his voice is as real as it is fierce, and he knows his threat is as good as a promise that he will do everything in his power to fulfill.

Uriel scowls. “Castiel,” he commands, “rein in your monkey.”

Despite the offensive words, it feels like a win. Dean smirks. Your.

Cas’s hand lands on Dean’s shoulder. “Dean,” he snaps in his ear.

Dean meets Cas’s glare with one of his own. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Cas glances at Uriel briefly, and Dean hates it like a lion hates its competition. “I won’t,” he agrees, after a moment. 

“The next time I come, you better have him tamed,” Uriel demands. Dean bristles at the word choice. “Or I’ll send down an angel who will.”

In an instant, he’s gone in a flutter of wings and loose pages. Dean hopes a bolt of lightning hits him on the way up.

Cas grasps his shoulders the second he’s gone and turns Dean to face him. “That was stupidly reckless, Dean—”

A voice pipes up from the front of the room. “Um,” it begins, and Dean would recognize a confused Sammy anywhere, “what was that about, Dean?”

Dean sighs, and glares at Cas. Turns out he’ll have to tell them about being the perfect vessel for Michael after all.

Shit.

Chapter Text

“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you—the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.”

And he went back to meet the fox.

— The Little Prince

“So you’re supposed to—what? Just let some archangel atomize you?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Guess so, Sammy,” he replies carelessly, rolling his shoulder in a strange motion Castiel thinks might stem from some sort of discomfort. “Not that I plan to let anything happen.”

Sam opens his mouth, probably to argue, but it’s Bobby who speaks next—never one to waste time. “So what’s your plan?”

“Don’t have one.” Dean hops onto a table to sit, knocking a book off in the process, and prods at his neck casually, like he’s brushing grit off his jacket or something similarly commonplace. Cas squints. Is there a wound there? The girl—yes, Dean had been choked. “I’m just—I’m working on it, okay?”

“Working on killing Lucifer without dying too,” Sam mutters irritatedly under his breath. Dean glares at him.

“Not like anyone else is gonna—Cas, what are you doing?”

Castiel hesitates, giving Dean enough time to slap his hand away before it can reach his head. The full ire in his gaze flips onto Castiel.

Castiel feels bewildered, and doesn’t bother to hide it. “Healing you,” he explains shortly. “Is this—this is the second time you’ve reacted like this. Is such a gesture not intuitive?”

Dean blinks at him. “No, Cas,” he snaps eventually. “Waving your hand in my face is not ‘intuitive,’ probably because human beings can’t heal each other with a touch.”

“I never thought of it like that,” Castiel admits, and then reaches out anyway. Dean lets him, but recoils with a hiss when, after healing the bruising on Dean’s neck, Castiel takes some time to press anti-angel warding into his ribs.

Immediately, Bobby lunges to his feet, and Sam grabs Castiel’s arm. The shotgun loads again, and this time Castiel’s the one on its business end. He tilts his head a fraction, confused.

“What did you—” Dean wheezes a little, holding his ribs. Castiel frowns. He didn’t think it would hurt so much for Dean. “What did you do to me?”

There’s distrust in his voice that Castiel immediately labels vile. He steps back, assessing the situation. Yes, of course Dean doesn’t know what he’s done—that he’s done him a favor, hiding him from Uriel and the other angels.

But before Castiel can answer, the barrel of the gun presses into his abdomen. It’s Bobby again, that protective look in his eye that Castiel’s already gotten to know well, slightly too wild to merely be a friend’s loyalty to another friend. No, this is a father whose son has been harmed under his watch. Castiel hadn’t minded it when it’d been directed at Uriel, but he finds it slightly staggering in its fury now that he’s its target. “What did you do to him?” he repeats Dean’s words even more adamantly. 

Castiel looks between Dean and Bobby, surprised when Dean doesn’t push the gun away from Castiel. There must be another misunderstanding here.

“I warded him against all angels,” Castiel explains, hoping to clear everything up.

“Did you brand me with it?” Dean demands, some strain still in his voice.

“No,” Castiel replies stiffly. Such medieval methods are beneath an angel of the Lord. “I carved it into your ribs.”

Dean actually drops his glare momentarily to stare. Bobby visibly steps back like he thinks Castiel’s a rabid animal, and Sam, when Castiel brings himself to look at him without seeing Lucifer’s vessel, is wide-eyed as a child. Castiel frowns. 

“It’s a safety measure,” he explains. “It hides you from every angel, including mysel—”

“What?” Sam interrupts, and Castiel gives him an annoyed look, already tired of that question, before he directs his eyes back to Dean, who’s feeling his ribs like he thinks he can trace the etchings. “You can’t just—you have to at least warn him, Castiel!”

Castiel tilts his head. He thought—he isn’t sure what he thought, except that he wanted to ward Dean and it was possible for him to do so. Like tagging a dog to keep it safe. Why should the dog have a say?

But Dean’s not a dog. He’s not. Castiel knows this. He berates himself for his slip.

He turns to Dean with earnest eyes. “Yes. I’m sorry, Dean. It didn’t occur to me to warn you.”

Dean waves him off nonchalantly, despite how upset he had looked earlier. What a strange dichotomy he presents, this emotion-driven man and the shields he builds over himself. They must be very heavy, like a knight’s armor, designed to protect his weakest parts.

Castiel doesn’t think any part of Dean is even slightly capable of being weak. He wouldn’t have stuck around so long if he thought differently.

“So you’re saying Uriel can’t just waltz through the door again?” Sam asks. “What about you? How are you going to find us if you have to leave?”

“Uriel is still perfectly capable of entering via the front door,” Castiel refutes, puzzled. “But he’ll have a hard time locating Dean once we leave. As for me—I will simply find you, Sam. Or, preferably, I’ll refrain from leaving in the first place.”

Dean seems to startle a fraction. “‘We’?”

Castiel rolls his eyes, a trick he learned from Dean and seems to communicate his exasperation effectively. “What about ‘God’s orders’ don’t you understand?”

“The part where He can’t find some other poor sap to sic his angels on,” Dean grumbles, but he doesn’t look particularly upset. 

Castiel doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to understand this particular human, not if he had a million years with him.

He kind of wants a million years with Dean anyway. 

“You’re my mission,” Castiel replies simply, but unlike when he first said it, some part of him twinges like maybe he’s not using the right word. Like maybe mission doesn’t quite fully encapsulate what Dean is to him.

Which is impossible, he assures himself. 

“All right, well, your mission’s pretty hungry after all this shit.” Dean gestures at empty air, where the ghosts may still have stood had Bobby not sent them away to wherever it is they’re going. Castiel envies them a little, the absolute certainty of their rage, and, afterward, their definite ending. He wishes anything was that clear anymore to him.

Castiel glances out the window before following Dean out of Bobby’s house to his car, leaving Sam and Bobby to research the sixty-six Seals. When he does, he notices a faint darkness behind him, and is surprised to see the specters of his wings cradling his own shadow. He pulls them in, hiding them from the light, confused at their conspicuousness, and realizes that it isn’t the sun they’ve been basking in. In Dean’s absence, they’ve grown cold, frosty compared to how they’d felt before.

He’s getting clumsy, leaving his wings visible to the creatures on this Earthly plane. But, by Heaven, how nice it had felt, how warm it had made him, the brilliance of Dean’s soul on the parts of himself Castiel usually hides.

“Try your burger,” Dean commands, pushing the plate he’d ordered for Castiel in his direction. “C’mon, they’re the best in the state.”

Castiel refrains from wrinkling his nose, just barely. “I can’t taste,” he says, instead of blatantly refusing.

Dean leans back against the booth of the middle-of-nowhere eighties diner they’re eating at, some new-age relic from a time Castiel isn’t familiar with, wasn’t present for. He misses his pyramids and sphinxes—humans were so simple, once.

But the waiter who comes to take their order is anything but simple. The people in the next booth are having a conversation which is at times a tragedy and other times a comedy, a Shakespearean element of theater happening right before Castiel’s eyes. The men drinking at the bar are somber in their laughter, despite how different those two things are, despite how Castiel’s never seen them coexist. And the family of four sipping milkshakes nearby—they’re travelers, the children too young to understand what they’re seeing, still delighted by the chocolate in their drinks, by the atmosphere. Castiel never bothered to notice these things before, these marks humans leave, the rings on the table, the stray hair hanging down from the bartender’s head, uncut. The scuffs on their knuckles, their smile lines, evidence of sentience. 

“Cas?” Dean calls, waving a hand in Castiel’s face. “You there?”

“Yes,” Castiel replies grumpily, returning his eyes to the burger. He’s never eaten such a thing; in truth, he hasn’t eaten since long before the country he’s in existed. 

“I was just sayin’, isn’t that sad, not being able to taste anything?” 

Castiel looks up at Dean in surprise. “No,” he replies after a moment of consideration. “Is it—is it exciting, for you? To be able to taste?”

“Hell yeah,” Dean says immediately, and then takes a huge bite of his burger. This time, Castiel actually does wrinkle his nose. “C’mon, try,” Dean pleads with him. “Just take a bite.”

Castiel humors him. He’s making that into a habit, isn’t he? 

The burger feels strange. There’s molecules he’s never witnessed mixed that are together in the bite he takes, something earthy and something else salty, a patty carrying the molecules of a heifer someone slaughtered gently, the remnants of the blade used to slice her apart lodged in her meat. How strange, that humans can kill something tenderly. How natural it seems to them, Castiel thinks, that obligation outweighs love. Right now, staring at Dean’s pleased smile, it’s not nearly as clear to Castiel as it should be—which outweighs which.

“Do you like it?” Dean asks, and—honestly, it hadn’t occurred to Castiel that there was something to enjoy in this. 

“Yes,” he finds himself saying. He thinks he likes the burger in a different way than Dean does, but sharing the barest of feelings with this human being feels monumental, feels like a victory. On his next bite, he learns the origins of the lettuce, once gnawed on by a rabbit that a little boy regretfully sent his dog after, and Castiel’s never seen such a thing before, regretful murder. 

Should he regret what he’s done? Or should he regret what he’s doing? He knows which God would tell him, but—he thinks there’s been a mistake, somewhere here. At first he thought it was just Dean, that Dean is special, because he’s the Sword or because he came back from Hell—and Dean is, but so is every other human. 

The waiter wears a bracelet given to her by a loved one. The men drinking are each grieving someone different, a daughter for one, a father for another, but they find solace in each other nonetheless. Solace—yes, Castiel’s never seen such a thing before, but it feels natural here, in this dimly-lit place, in this intermission, this liminal space. Half the people here will never return. A third of this diner’s occupants will die in the next ten years. Even more will lose someone, till they’re the ones sat at the bar telling stories. Maybe the traveling family will have lost a son, and they will end up sitting there, in those chairs, the boy’s sister grieving a brother, the parents grieving a child. And finding solace in each other, despite it. Despite everything.

It’s beautiful. It’s tragic. The Shakespearean trio in the next booth all laugh at a joke one of them made, and they will not always be a trio—one day they will be a duo, and their laughter will be a duet, missing a certain undertone, missing its high note perhaps, and their symphony will be lacking. But it will be none the worse for it.

God, what has Castiel been doing all his life? This is where he’s meant to be, he knows it now, this is what he was made for; not the pyramids, not the monkeys, not working as a pencil pusher nor as a minion of God; it was this, to be here at this moment, with Dean Winchester, Sword of Michael, ambassador of a wonderful and sinful species that Castiel has never fully understood until this moment.

You’re going to die, he wants to tell Dean. One day, you’re going to die. Maybe it’s my brother who’s going to do it. Aren’t you scared? Shouldn’t you always be scared, that any moment you could lose yourself, lose your brother, lose everything?

But Dean isn’t. No, right now he’s beaming. “Really? Take another bite, man. I can get you another one.” 

“No,” Castiel rasps, halfway to a croak, as if he’s been screaming. He feels the weight of God pressing down on his titanium and iron and old-world spine and he’s never hated his orders more than he does now, has never hated them before at all. “No, I’m okay.”

There’s nothing that the molecules of a burger could tell him that he doesn’t already know, now. Dean, however—Castiel could look at Dean forever and never tire of it. 

“Thank you,” he says, likely out of the blue for Dean.

Dean blinks. “No problem, Cas,” he replies offhandedly, and then bites into his burger and grins at its taste.

Castiel smiles back. 

Forever. Yes, forever sounds good.