AN: I've been absent from this site for far too long. So, to get myself in the writing mood, I wrote this little thing in the span of an hour. I'm not as proud of this as I am my other Supernatural projects in the works, but I hope someone will get some enjoyment out of it at least.

Under the Gaze of an Angel

The hotel the boys had bunked in for the night was nothing special. It was a tiny brick building with the kind of beds where you could feel every spring. Paint was peeling off the walls and the lights had a constant hum and flicker that made Dean edgy. In fact, he wasn't happy until almost every surface in the room had a line of salt ringing it, though the white grains clashed with the dusty grime.

He was less antsy by the time Cas showed up to keep him company, and when Sam came in with a plastic bag full of snacks and a case of beer, the nerves were almost completely gone. His emotions verged on euphoria when Castiel offered to go with him somewhere quiet, even offering to ride in the Impala as opposed to just zapping them anywhere Dean fancied.

"Wanna come, Sammy?" Dean asked as he scooped his keys off the nightstand, careful not to disrupt the grains of salt by the lamp.

From the faded armchair with questionable stains in the corner, Sam shook his head. Shaggy brown locks fell into his eyes, and he had to swipe them behind his ear before he could answer. "Nah, I'm just gonna chase down a few leads here. You guys go, have fun."

He wasn't sure what leads his brother was chasing since they weren't working a case, but he just shrugged, picked up the bag of snacks and beer, and followed Cas outside.

It wasn't until they passed a newspaper stand on the way to the car that Dean's anxious feeling returned. The headlines didn't make him uneasy, but the date nagged at him. As he slid behind the wheel of the Impala, he knew why; today was Mother's Day.

Now that he knew the date, it suddenly made sense that the café across the street was full of families or that women were walking down the sidewalk with pink roses or balloons. He managed to stuff the key into the ignition before a touch to the arm made him jerk his head up only to find himself under the scrutiny of an angel.

"Dean, you're shaking." Castiel looked concerned, and Dean cursed himself for forgetting that he wasn't alone.

He tried to pull himself together. It was just a holiday, and his mother had been gone for almost twenty-nine years. This shouldn't get to him, but his voice cracked as he said "I'm fine," and he ended up sagging into the worn leather of the driver's seat.

The angel didn't dignify that with an answer. Cas didn't even look pitying as his hand traveled from Dean's shoulder down his arm and back up again in soothing repetition. The concern never faded from his eyes.

It was a while – several steadying breaths and a few cans of beer – before Dean reached into his pocket, all ideas of driving anywhere gone from his mind. The sun had started to set, the sky was an orange-y-purple, and Dean was actually starting to relax. Deep inside a jacket pocket, he found a folded piece of paper. Wordlessly, he handed it to the other man.

Castiel's fingers unfolded the paper quizzically. The deep creases suggested this wasn't the first time it'd been read, and the slight yellowing and crinkled edges told him this wasn't something Dean had written yesterday. "What is it?" He asked, voice soft. The page only held two things; a drawing and a single sentence, both scrawled in the clumsy hand of a child.

"Y'know how –." Dean started, and stopped. "Okay, you don't know, but when you're little, sometimes teachers have a real thing for holidays."

Cas nodded. He'd wandered the earth for millennia, so he'd seen how the humans treated these days of celebration.

The hunter shifted more comfortably in his seat, pulled two beers from the case and handed one to Cas before he continued. "This must've been the second school I'd been to since dad took us on the road, and I didn't like it. This friggin' teacher always smelled like grapes and she was too damn happy. One day, she made us all draw pictures of our families, 'cause we could give 'em to our moms on Mother's Day. 'Don't you all want your mothers to smile?' she asked, and every kid said yes."

"Except you?" Cas questioned, because the picture on the paper was starting to make sense. This was a point in Dean's life after he'd lost his mother.

Dean gave a sad breath of a laugh. "I should've. Woulda been the perfect time to tell the woman about mom, but I didn't. I drew a picture just like the rest of the class, and when we hung them on the wall, I was just as proud of it as anyone else."

"So what happened?"

He shrugged. "Kids are cruel, man. We had to tell everyone about what we drew, and this little brat said my picture couldn't be with everyone else's because I didn't have a mom. But I did. I do." Dean felt tears sting his eyes, and that was ridiculous because this happened so long ago.

"Your mother is in heaven, Dean. In the fields of the Lord," Castiel's hand had never left Dean's arm, and now his touches were insistent and reassuring.

He felt a small smile tug at his lips. "That's what I told those snot nosed little bastards. I told 'em that one day, I'd find an angel who 'd give my mom this picture."

And suddenly, the phrase we're okay which was scrawled in messy block letters made sense, too. Everything, from the three stick figures with messy brown blobs on their heads, to the woman with yellow lines coming out of the side of her face and floating a little too close to the sun for Castiel's comfort suddenly came together. And now seemed as good a time as any to tell the hunter what had been weighing on him since their first encounter.

With slight hesitation, Castiel caught Dean's gaze. "I've never told you, but I met Mary Winchester."

Seconds turned to minutes as Dean processed Castiel's words with a few blinks and a clenched jaw. "Come again?" He finally deadpanned.

"Several weeks before her death," Castiel explained. "I knew that one day, you were to be my charge. This was supposed to be nothing more than a scouting mission, but I watched her. The way she took care of you, of your brother, all that kindness pulled me in."

"How'd you find a vessel?" Of all the questions rolling around in Dean's mind, this was the one his brain had deemed important enough to voice. It conjured up images of Cas blowing out all the windows, glass scattering around Mary and flaking in a young Dean's hair as he hovered protectively over his baby brother. All because Castiel tried to speak to Mary in an angelic tongue.

"It was a man in the Novak bloodline. Jimmy's uncle, if I recall. Mary let me in under the pretext of a life insurance salesman." Castiel's eyes took on a faraway look, and Dean could almost see him in the kitchen of his childhood home, elbows resting on the table as he pitched a routine that may or may not have been in the back of Jimmy's uncle's mind. "She knew she was going to die," the angel murmured almost to himself.

For a moment, Dean was stunned. But why should he be? His mother willingly made the deal to bring John back, she knew the consequences. He didn't want to think about all the guilt or sorrow she bore, knowing that she had to leave the family she loved so much behind, but he couldn't stop the thoughts or the few tears he felt trickle down his cheeks. "Then why'd she go into that nursery?"

Cas wiped away the tears that were within his reach. "She had no memories of your warnings, Dean," he said soothingly. "She said she had to face her demons, and she'd do that willingly knowing that her boys were safe."

Dean's head snapped up to look at his companion, and for the first time in almost twenty-nine years, that crushing sense of guilt was lifted. His mother was a fighter, and those words were so like her that Dean could almost hear her voice in his head. For the first time he stopped blaming himself, stopped blaming his father for her death. Every muscle in his body relaxed and he felt just a little less damaged.

"Thanks, Cas," he whispered. That calming touch was back and Dean leaned into it. "What d'ya say we go somewhere? Sam bought pie," he added, eyes darting to the bag between them.

Castiel felt a fond smile, something that only happened in the presence of this man, pull at the corners of his lips. "That would be nice," he said, tucking Dean's drawing into the recesses of his trenchcoat.

"I know just the place." Dean smiled, and felt the engine turn over just as the scores of Metallica rattled the car's frame. He steered out into the street and pointed his baby in the direction of an empty field on the other side of town. A wide open space was just what he needed to get a grip on the happiness bubbling up within him.

His mother was okay. She was happy. She had an angel watching over her, the same one he'd entrust his life to any day.