When Castiel finally finds Gabriel, it is not at the Hershey factory in Pennsylvania, or even up in what remained of Heaven. It is in a small house about twenty miles north of the bunker. Just past the foyer, there is a living room with a grand fireplace. Gabriel is sitting on a plush, tan couch, holding a half-full glass of red wine, and there is a comforter draped snugly around his shoulders. There is a fire, roaring steadily in the brazier. "Gabriel, are you...cold?" inquires Castiel, somewhat incredulously. Archangels didn't feel the cold, did they?
"Hey Cassie," says Gabriel, a small, sad smile passing over his face, his tan-blonde and too-long hair casting jagged shadows over three-day stubble. "And yes, I am cold. Being one of Daddy's favorites didn't exempt me when Heaven collapsed. It just left me a little further to fall." Gabriel's harsh and sneering tone unsettles Castiel. He crosses the space between himself and the couch soundlessly, and settles on the opposite end from his brother. Gabriel's whiskey eyes have the reflections of the flames dancing in them. Gabriel had looked after him as a fledgling, and Castiel has always seen Gabriel as this immutable constant in his life, and watching Gabriel ask the same painful questions Castiel had asked when he had first began to lose his grace was painful.
"Hey, Gabriel," says Castiel. "I'm here." It was what Gabriel has always told him after he was upset about something and needed comfort. Gabriel extended his blanket clad arm, and Castiel scooted along the couch until he was safely under his brother's blanket "wing". There was silence, as they watched the flames crackle and leap in the brazier. After some minutes of silence except for the crackle of the fire, Gabriel's face lightens, but there is no levity when he speaks.
"I should have been there more. For all you fledglings. We all should have. Me, Mike, Raph, Luci, the lot of us. We should have done... a lot of things, but we didn't do any of them. And now Heaven's bust and we've all got to figure out how to be the things Dad told us to love the most. And I just, don't know at all. That terrifies me, Cas." Gabriel begins to cry, his shoulders shaking and fat blobs of water rolling down his cheeks and chin. Castiel gathers up his brother, blanket and all, and pets his hair and makes soothing noises until they are both soundly asleep, the comforting popping of the dwindling fire the only noise to be heard.