I awoke only to find my lungs empty,
and through the night so it seems I'm done breathing,
and now my dreams are nothing like they were meant to be,
and I'm breaking down,
I think I'm breaking down.

City and the Colour – Sleeping sickness

Dreamless

Screams, raw and near inhuman, claw through the thick steel door.

Pleading and crying in one breath, laughing and taunting in the next.

They cut past the mortal flesh, crawl deep inside my vessel and stir within me the strangest feelings... a deep churning mass of sharp unfamiliar angles like glass and sand and fractured filaments, burnt out. Useless.

I don't know what to do with these feelings; I can barely identify them by name.

I ask Jimmy Novak, 'what is this, what do I call it?' but Jimmy Novak doesn't answer.

Jimmy Novak's presence, hidden behind mine, has been growing weaker. I can still feel him. A small nucleus of consciousness nestled inside the heart of a comet, but as the celestial fire within me sputters and dies, so does my connection to him. It won't be long before I stop feeling him altogether.

The human Jimmy Novak is slowly making way for the human Castiel. For me.

I don't want him to go; I don't want to face these boiling emotions, they overwhelm my already too human heart. I feel as though I am breaking.

Dean brings a bottle to his lips and tips it up. He gulps down mouthfuls of amber liquid, heavy and oaky in scent, and the column of his throat shifts and dips with each rolling swallow.

Then he turns, tells me he needs some air and walks away. The rickety wooden stairs groan a dull protest under his dragging footfalls. His shoulders are slumped under the weight of our impossible task and...I don't know what to say.

I try reassurances, but they're hollow and awkward. Sam continues to scream, the corrupt blood surges inside him, twisting and howling.

I feel fear for the first time and it is crushing.

Time passes as it always does for angels; quickly, slowly.

Every second is pulled apart into a million increments. I follow a mote of dust as it dances through a shaft of light in the basement for what could be a century but is really just one, long exhalation of stale air from my lungs.

And then I hear it.

Sam's cries dissolve away. He pulls against his restraints, but even the persistent grind of metal against metal drops to a baseline –white noise. I hear Dean, or rather I feel Dean.

In a heartbeat I am behind him, standing in the scrap yard among the rusted car carcasses.

His face is upturned to the heavens; his palms are held open.

"Dammit Cas, I want to be left alone," he growls hoarsely without turning to look at me.

The empty bottle of whiskey is sitting precariously on the bonnet of the Impala.

Again words stick in my mouth, so I step forward and place a hand on his shoulder. The fabric is rough under my palm and if I concentrate I can follow the path of each and every fibre, weaving and interlocking. Each tiny fragment of skin imbedded into the weave. Every dried particle of blood.

My thumb smoothes over the surface, trying to remove these imperfections.

"Cas-" Dean's voice is stern, "-personal space," it is not accompanied by the usual wit and bravado, but rather, it sounds like a rehearsed line - something he is tired of telling me.

My hand jerks back, seemingly of its own accord, and fists into the waxy pocket of my trench coat.

"You were asking for help," I say flatly.

Finally his had swivels to fix me with a long assessing stare, "Not from you."

His eyes are red and raw. Dark smudges mar the skin underneath his eyes. I feel another strange compulsion, but I ignore it.

Instead I try to say something, anything to make him understand.

"You're not empty Dean. You aren't dead inside."

It's clumsy, but to the point. I feel satisfied with my response.

Dean's breath hitches, his chest shudders, and his green eyes drop to the cracked asphalt. There is a long silence - long for him; short and long for me.

"I just want it to stop Cas."

There isn't much I can offer him. I cannot exorcise his demons, I can barely even find the right words, and I cannot do this task for him.

I most certainly cannot give in to the strange desire coiling through Jimmy Novak's body.

No, my body, I remind myself. These desires aren't Jimmy Novak's, they are mine.

But, not all my heavenly powers have escaped me. I can make it all stop, if only for a short human time.

I stride forward, Dean flinches, but my fingers touch his temple before he can protest. He sags down heavily – unconscious. With a thought we are back inside Bobby's house and I am placing him silently onto the single cot.

I stare for a while. I acknowledge the intense wave of emotion surging through me and then without a word I snap back to the basement and to Sam's feverish screams. The dust swirls around me and I track its progress across the empty space.

I cannot offer Dean much, but I can give him a few hours of dreamless oblivion.