AN: The first of three fics written mentally in each of my classes. I blame this one on a question about sulfur and an hour and a half of sitting quietly in class. I did fall asleep halfway through mentally writing, but... I finished it anyways. ^.^ Castiel makes an amazing lullaby, even if my mind was visiting Hell...

Falls just after 6.19. Surprisingly not slash, but if you squint you can make it be there. =)

Disclaimer: I disclaim. ^.^

Castiel leaned against the cold stone wall of a street building. It was cold out—his breath made little puffs of fog when he breathed out—and the pavement was damp, but he didn't want to move. The street was deserted but for him, lit only by a dim lap a few dozen meters to his right. The silence was only broken by the even tempo of his own breathing, the pounding of his heart in his ears, the crickets chirping somewhere out there in the dark, and the electrical buzzing of the bulb down the street.

Even without the silence he would have heard the soft flutter of wings stirring up the air. He was unsurprised that his brother had found him: Balthazar was all too good at that, lately.

"You shouldn't run off like that, Cas," Balthazar chided, sounding more like the older brother he was. He rarely showed his more serious side, but he was a determined being, always had been. When he joined a cause he put all of himself into it, making him the best second-in-command Cas could have these days. It also meant that he was more than capable of watching the army for a while in his absence.

"You are more than capable of commanding in my absence," Castiel told him, verbalizing his decision.

"But you're their leader, Cas. I'm just the eccentric and sometimes helpful guy on the side. They want you."

"Tough," Cas bit back, but he sighed. "I am sorry."

Balthazar frowned. "So the Winchesters found out, big deal. Why do you care what they think anyway, Cas? They're just a couple of humans."

Castiel frowned. "There's no such thing as 'just humans', brother," he lectured. "Each one is unique with his or her own strength and weakness. Each is a force to be reckoned with that should never be underestimated. Don't make the mistakes that led to our brethren's downfall."

"Yeah, yeah," Balthazar said, brushing off Cas' words. "But really, Cas, you need to keep fighting. Either go talk to your little monkey and get him to kiss all that hurt better—" Cas made a disgruntled noise, and Balthazar ignored it, "—or come rejoin our ranks."

Castiel frowned. "I cannot talk to Dean."

"You sound like a teenage girl," Balthazar pointed out. "You can, and you will." Castiel expected Balthazar to attempt to force him, but instead Balthazar put a hand on his shoulder. "Can you do this on your own, or do you need me to show you why I joined you in the war against Raphael?"

"I…" Castiel honestly didn't want to face either thing. He had never asked why Balthazar had joined him, partly because the angel confused him and Dean had put him through enough confusion to last a lifetime, and partly because he was too grateful for the help to pick at it. If the angel's expression was anything to go by then whatever he'd seen—likely in the future—was huge.

Balthazar waited only for a few seconds before he reached out and touched Castiel's temple. The world went dark, but soon slowly filled back in with color.

It was Heaven, but it was no longer the magnificent place it had once been. This was the angel's domain, but it looked more like Constantinople after it had been sacked. Few buildings remained, and those with power resided in them. Some of the less broken buildings were occupied by the angels of lesser power, many of Raphael's ground-level troops. None of Castiel's were in sight: they had either all died or been slaughter upon surrender. Or… Castiel didn't like to think of any other alternatives.

Looking down at a different angle, Cas could see past the ground and down into the human's never-ending expanse of Heaven's realm. It was largely wrecked; some pockets were fine, the souls within them untouched, but others seemed to have exploded and taken out the surrounding soul's space as well. Raphael and his cronies had been tapping into the soul's power, then, and they hadn't all been careful enough. Some souls had been violently exploded…no, this wasn't the Heaven it was supposed to be. Other places were simply dark, more like black holes than the simple emptiness of destroyed space. These were from the souls that had been sucked dry, all of their power drained. The horrors of that process were too painful to imagine, and Castiel looked back up at Raphael's kingdom in a sea of destruction with new vengeance.

He was sure that he'd seen enough, but Balthazar appeared beside him. "Keep looking," he commanded, tilting his head back down toward the human's part. Castiel's eyes sought out Asher, the young man that had helped Sam and Dean every time they landed themselves here. He'd gotten caught in the crossfire, strung up in his own Heaven of existence. His computers were smashed, his bar covered in blood, and he hung from the ceiling by his entrails... Castiel couldn't focus on the exact torture that had been used on the boy; it was too much for his squeamish stomach and he feared the food he'd eaten earlier in Dean's company might come up.

He looked away from Asher's "Heaven" only to have his eye caught by Mary Winchester's. He didn't have to focus on details with her; her soul had been tainted, spoiling the whole section like a slice of pie that had inexplicably rotted in the pan. Zachariah had corrupted it, then. He'd had too much fun playing with her soul as he chased down the boys; who knew, maybe Raphael had even picked up where Zachariah left off. To think of what Dean would feel if he could see his mother now…. His stomach lurched once more, this time in a more heartbroken than sickened kind of pain, and Cas turned away again.

"They're like a mafia," Raphael informed Castiel calmly, "except they took out all of their opposition. You… and the demon's king, as well."

They were no longer in Heaven, now, but Hell. Castiel recognized it from rescuing Dean, but he would have known it even if he had never set foot inside. The whole place smelled of sulfur, echoed with cries, and the anguish was easily felt in the air. The evil of the place seeped into his bones, aching until he wished he could tear them out to stop the pain.

"Why are we here?" he asked, but Balthazar only shrugged mysteriously.

"Look around," he suggested when Castiel didn't move. "You'll come to understand."

There were demons here; Cas noticed that first. But these demons were… off. There was something different about them. They were still twisted, tortured, corrupted souls, pure evil in a tangible form, but there was still something different to their essence. He couldn't quite place it.

He walked in deeper.

He placed it as soon as he saw the first angel. The angel's wings had been turned so black they looked purple, a soot-covered color that came naturally to no angel. Wings were white, gray, tan, reddish-brown, but never black. That was the color their Father reserved for beings of evil.

And it wasn't just one angel, but many. Possibly hundreds. So many of them, too many to count, and suddenly the demons made sense. They were all from these different angels, not from Lucifer and Lilith.

And then he stopped, because suddenly he understood. There, strung up on one of the racks in front of him, was Dean. Dean was bloody and sliced up with decorative pictures marring his skin, but that wasn't the worst. His eyes had been gouged half out so that they dangled from the sockets. His fingernails had been pulled out one by one with pliers and dropped to the ground. Every finger, every tone, and then methodically every bone in his body had been broken. And all of that was just the beginning. The demons were still going, but Dean was too messed up to even scream. A gurgle came from his throat, blood dripping out of his mouth, but that was it. He jumped every time they broke another bone, sliced another laceration, or pulled out a tooth, but other than that he was nearly unresponsive.

Castiel wanted to call out to him, to tell Dean he was there, but the man wouldn't be able to hear him. He wasn't really there; he was just in Balthazar's recreation of the place, but God…. And even if he had been there for real, Cas noticed in horror that Dean's ears had both been cut off, and by the little fragments littering the ground at the demons' feet they'd been sliced off a little bit at a time.

Castiel had to turn away, but that wasn't much better. When his eyes spun frantically to the right, looking for anything else to watch, he saw himself. He was hung ten feet high, suspended by nails driven through his wings. They were slashed up and bloodied, and his body too was marred by cuts, but he was relatively unharmed in comparison to his Winchester. His torture was to watch them harm his charge and be unable to do anything to stop them. By the broken look he held, it was working.

Castiel jumped when a hand dropped on his shoulder, but relaxed as he recognized Balthazar. "I'm sorry, brother," Balthazar told him, and before Cas could reply they were somewhere else.

They looked down on Earth, now… or what remained of it. "What happened?" Castiel asked in horror, looking at the mess that had been made of his Father's most beautiful creation.

"World War Three," Balthazar told him. "One country nuked another, and then those allies nuked that country, and so on…. And now that's what's left." It was only fragments here and there. "Northern London's fairly decent," Balthazar said, pointing. "They blew the crap out of Russia, though. Oh! Southern France is okay. Bits of South Africa. The rain forests burned, but a bit of South America's okay. The US kind of ensured in its arrogance that all of North America was destroyed."

"Bobby Singer?" Cas asked hesitantly. "Sam?"

"Maybe alive, maybe dead," Balthazar said with a shrug. "Heaven's not doing great and the world's not doing much better, Cassie. Would you really want them to be either place? And even Crowley kept his Hell more fair than not."

Cas nodded and felt himself falling into shock. Balthazar finally showed mercy and they were once more dropped into the empty street, the cold night air still fresh as it filled Castiel's lungs. He was home.

"Do you see why we've got to keep fighting, Castiel?" Balthazar asked. Cas could only nod. "So go fix things with your Winchester boys, okay? You need to be honest. You'll feel better." Balthazar hadn't let him go yet, and so Cas had no warning before he was dropped on Bobby's doorstep. Unsure of what to do, he simply walked inside.

He made his way to the kitchen and leaned in the doorway, observing to two figures at the table. Sam was absent, but Dean was staring into a bottle of beer and Bobby was pretending to read a book of lore and really shooting concerned looks at Dean. "I'm fine," Dean growled, not looking up and not sounding fine at all. Cas felt inexplicably warm at the realization that his assumed betrayal caused Dean to be this distraught, but he also hated to see his charge in pain, and he aimed to end it as quickly as possible.

It was hard, though. He'd been lying for so long that it was hard to give in and tell Dean everything he'd done wrong, with the lying now compounded on top of the initial problem. He could see why humans got trapped into not telling the truth so often; it was so much easier.

But he had to, so he said, "I'm sorry."

"Cas?" Bobby spun around so fast that he almost knocked his chair over. "What are you doing here, ya idjit?" Castiel wondered when he'd gone from "Castiel" to "Cas" with anyone other than Dean, and when he'd become another of Bobby's "idjits".

"I came to apologize… and explain. I am sorry that I lied to you," he said, staring at Dean as he said it. He knew that Dean would inevitably have to stare back eventually, because for some reason he always got uncomfortable when Castiel stared at him unwaveringly. He was right, and was rewarded with the sight of Dean's hurt blue eyes. "I am sorry that I allowed you to think that Crowley was dead. I needed to make this bargain to win my war. Without it, I would be lost, and I would not be able to protect you… any of you," he expanded, glancing at Bobby as he said the latter portion.

"Explain," Dean demanded, unrelenting as ever.

Cas pulled up a chair and explained.

There was a lot of silence in the room when he finished, but eventually Dean's eyes left the table and returned to Castiel's. "I don't like it," he told Cas, "but you're right. So… don't screw it up. Okay?" It was as emotional as Dean Winchester could get, and Cas was trying to not feel Bobby's overwhelming pride as it crashed over him in a wave.

"Thank you." Cas understood now what Balthazar had meant about feeling better. There was something about messing up, knowing you'd messed up, and being forgiven and accepted anyways that just made him feel… warm. He realized dully that this was what families did, and he was relieved that he'd been accepted into this family. So while the war was still going on and he could win or lose with major consequences, for just a moment Castiel felt completely safe, happy, and loved.

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