We've been run down every hill
Chased up all the dead end streets
But if you try to cut us out
You'll get a kick in the teeth
Ladies and gents, we're still alive
By the skin of our teeth, now it's killing time
Angel in our pocket, devil by our side
We ain't going nowhere 'cause heroes never die

"Blood of Heroes" by Megadeth

It was a cold, clear Thursday morning when angel radio went deathly silent.

By Thursday evening, Castiel was steadily attempting to drink a bar dry.

By Friday morning (technically), the fallen angel started his first bar brawl.

All told, it was not the best of days.

Dean has no idea what woke him. Blinking up at the dusty, distant ceiling, he tries to pin down the faint sense of unease that dragged him from a blessedly dreamless warded sleep. He hadn't reached for his gun, and nobody had ended up punched in his waking moments, so he figures it probably isn't imminent danger. Unfortunately, his apparent Spidey-Sense didn't come with an instruction manual, so he was going to have to figure it out the old-fashioned way.

Stretching carefully, testing the limits of his range of motion and holding it until the sharp pain in his shoulder eases, Dean finally rolls to sitting up and immediately folds himself around the angel sitting stiffly at the foot of the sleeping bag, arms around his waist and chest pressed to his lover's bare back, resting his chin on Cas's shoulder. "Mornin'."

Dean doesn't know what he was expecting. He shouldn't have ignored the intuition. He was learning better than to tune it out, now, but it was the end of the world and some sense of foreboding was pretty much expected. What he didn't foresee was Cas crumpling in on himself, head resting against his knees, breath ragged and harsh as if he'd been holding it until Dean woke. "Whoa, man. . ." Tightening his arms around Castiel, he flattens his hands against his chest, pulling him in tighter and hugging Cas to him. "Shh. I've got you, Cas. What. . .?"

"They're gone, Dean."

His words are a rough and broken whisper, and he twists in Dean's arms, burying his face against Dean's neck as if looking for some way to anchor himself, to ground himself to the earth. Across the room, Sam stirs to wakefulness, pulled by the sound of his brother's concern, hand already closing around a gun as he sits up from his own sleeping bag. The Winchesters exchange a look over the top of Castiel's head as Dean shifts his grip, rubbing soothing circles against Cas's skin, green eyes wide and concerned.

"You gotta give me more than that, Cas. What the hell's going on?"

The noise wrung from Cas at the question is somewhere between a sob and a bitter laugh, and it startles all three of them. Cas freezes in his arms, muscles locked to stillness, and Dean can feel the warm puff of air moving across his shoulder as with a few deliberate metronome breaths Cas pulls himself together, rejecting any notion of himself as weak or vulnerable, and he draws back at last, turning his head away. His voice when he speaks is the familiar, stoic rasp of his past life, and Dean knows immediately that his composure is a complete lie. Cas has never been good at lying. "Heaven, Dean. Michael has made good on his promise to you, that they would cease interfering. Heaven has closed its doors, withdrawn its angels, and left us here." Eyes fixed on a point in the distance, chin high, he can't seem to help the words that escape him in a coarse, absent murmur. "I'm alone."

Dean has never really needed a reason to hate Michael. But the day the archangel closed off Heaven and took with him the last vestiges of angelic connection Castiel had in his humanity, Dean despised him. "Cas, look at me."

There's a moment where Castiel resists the command, and Dean rests a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently and repeating the request. Castiel's sudden regard hits him like a punch to the gut: his first clear look at the man, and he's seeing a ghost. A memory. He'd thought it was the drugs that changed Castiel, turned him into the broken shell he'd met in 2014. God, he'd been such an idiot. He knew better. That future Cas had told him. That future Dean had told him.

The angels aren't listening! They just—left—gave up!

I think it had something to do with the other angels leaving. When they bailed, my mojo just kind of. . . drained away.

Heaven had closed shop, abandoned Castiel as the last angel on earth, ripped his only connection to his family from him, and he had been alone. The Dean of that future hadn't cared how much his friend was hurting, too caught up in his own pain and anger, too ready to throw him away for a chance at revenge.

Every line in Cas's face has deepened in sorrow, the shadows beneath his eyes so stark they seem like a bruise. There's no light to his bright blue eyes, making them seem dull and gray and grief-stricken. His hair is flat, matted to his skull by his own palms as he held his head in his hands and probably desperately sought that angel-radio connection for hours until Dean woke. He's human, he's broken, and he's desperately lost.

Just a joint, a fake smile, and a meaningless hookup away from the Cas that Dean met, now.

"You're not alone, Cas." Reaching up, he brings his palms to Cas's cheeks, cradling his angel's face in his hands, touching his forehead against Castiel's, noses resting against each other's and eyes closed. "C'mon, man. You know that. You're not alone."

Dean can hear Sam join them, sitting on the floor beside their sleeping bag, and his brother hesitates before resting a broad hand on Cas's shoulder. They both carry traces of Castiel's torn, battered grace, the spark he'd infused into Sam when pulling his body from hell. The piece he'd left behind in Dean, as he reshaped his body, healed his soul, and branded him. Every trickle he'd given them, when healing them. What Cas had poured into Dean to bring him back again at Storm Lake. They know he can feel it even after ripping his power and Grace out in his fall. This is the most comfort they can offer him, now.

After a moment, Cas nods once and pushes himself up to his feet as Dean's hands fall away, leaving both boys and their comforting words behind.

"We need to assess the situation. With the threat of Heaven's interference gone, both sides of the war, Crowley and Lucifer, are freer to act overtly." It would be harder to take the Castiel-Angel-Of-The-Lord voice and posture seriously in pajama pants and halfway into buttoning up one of his dress shirts to cover the scars and tattoo on his chest, if it weren't for the deadly seriousness he infused in every syllable.

"Laptop battery needs to charge." Sam remarks carefully, glancing at Dean, and the brothers share a moment of understanding. "If things have gotten bad we need to stick close to one of the safehouses. We shouldn't travel too far, and we already built the contacts here as FBI if we need anything from the police databases."

Which would explain why Cas was pulling out the carefully folded suit from the bottom of his bag, turned away from them, mechanically going through the motions of getting ready.

"Breakfast first." Dean declares, pushing himself to his feet and moving to join Cas at their bags, hands coming up to catch Cas's. The angel freezes, prepared to refuse comfort again in favor of being able to function, before Dean undoes the work he had been doing on his tie and fixes it, his words gentle. "You were doing it backwards again." Cas accepts the excuse to touch him without comment, watching Dean's hands rather than meeting his eyes, and he shrugs his blazer on immediately after, stepping back to pull on his slacks and grab his shoes.

Cas needs to be the soldier right now. He retreats into that the way Dean does into sarcasm and drinks. The way Sam buries himself in research. They all need the comfort of routine right now.

Because this is the day the world goes to Hell.