"Alright, Kevin, show us what ya got," Dean said as he walked up and put his hands on the back of the chair the prophet was sitting on.
Kevin jumped, startled from his deepest thoughts. He'd been sitting for hours staring at the same piece of paper trying to make sense of what was written on it, but to no avail. The sudden intrusion of Dean's voice was surprising and a bit unpleasant.
"Dude, you have to stop doing that! If I have a heart attack, you're left without a prophet and I have to go to Heaven which isn't exactly a safe haven now, is it?"
Sam sat in the chair opposite Kevin and Dean moved to stand at the end of the table.
They'd both been away from the bunker for a few days working on a case while Kevin continued trying to decipher the Angel Tablet. He tried his best, but it wasn't exactly like reading the Sunday newspaper; he felt like the brothers really didn't understand the struggles that came with reading (or trying to read) the Tablets. Headaches, migraines behind his eyes, crippling exhaustion, and frustration were the forerunners on the long list of miseries the Tablets gave him. And even then he was left with nothing but more determination, more anger, and empty bottles of pain killers.
"Do you have anything new to tell us?" Sam asked softly.
Sometimes Kevin liked Sam more than Dean. Not that he didn't like Dean; he respected and admired the man more than anyone he'd ever met. But Dean was a little rough around the edges; Sam was a little gentler.
Kevin sighed and rolled his eyes.
"Not really. I mean, I've found something about how the angels were created but nothing about sending them back to Heaven."
"Well how much longer is it going to take?"
"Dean-"
"No Sam, I just want to know when we're gonna be ready to send those winged dicks back to where they came from. We've had this tablet for three months now and we haven't found anything useful at all," Dean practically shouted. He wasn't really mad at Kevin, he was just restless and uneasy about the whole mess they'd fallen into. And he was never really good with words, always coming off as the harsher of the two brothers, so with this statement mixed with his impatient tone, he set Kevin off.
"It's not like I'm not trying, Dean. I don't see you sitting here day and night trying to decipher a piece of stone that was made thousands of years ago in an extinct language. Oh yeah, that's right, because I'm the only human on Earth who can. So I would appreciate it if you'd back off my case and stopped complaining!"
Silence filled the room as Kevin's words reverberated off the walls. It was a few moments before Dean spoke again, his voice gruff with embarrassment.
"Of course, Kev, I'm sorry."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Sam asked, trying to relieve the sudden tension in the room.
"You could go on a food run," Kevin replied in a clipped voice.
The Winchesters took this as a sign that Kevin wanted to be alone so they left, promising to bring back some grub.
Neither of them spoke on the way to the fast food restaurant or while they were waiting for their food, opting to just listen to the classic rock playing through the speakers of the Impala, but Sam spoke up on the way back to the bunker.
"You should be a little nicer to Kevin."
"Nicer?" Dean asked incredulously. It's not like he was ever mean to the kid, he thought of Kevin as another little brother. Sure he pushed him, sometimes past the limits Kevin thought he had, but he cared about the guy.
"Ok, maybe not 'nicer', but a little more gentle and, I guess, understanding?" he said the word like a question. "He's just a kid, Dean, and you've seen the way these Tablets affect him; it's not an easy thing to do."
"I know that."
"So you need to stop pressuring him." He stopped talking for a minute then added quietly, "I'm still confused as to why you want to send the angels back."
At this, Dean pulled the Impala over onto the side of the road and cut the engine off. The sun was just starting to set and the road was empty of other cars.
"What?"
"I'm still confused as to why you want to send the angels back to Heaven, Dean."
Dean looked at his brother as if he'd sprouted four heads. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Are you serious? You honestly don't know why I think we should kick their asses back to where they belong?"
Sam started getting irritated. "No Dean, I know why you don't like the angels; they're self-righteous and cocky and only care about themselves. I get why you don't want them around. Hell, I feel the same way. But you do realize that if Kevin finds a way to send all the angels back to Heaven, it will send all the angels back to Heaven, right?"
Dean knew where Sam was going with the conversation; it wasn't like Dean hadn't thought about it before. In fact, the very topic Sam was dancing around was the reason Dean didn't get much sleep anymore. He was torn.
Turning his head toward the horizon, Dean said, "You mean Cas."
It was a statement that surprised Sam. Of course he'd been talking about Castiel, but what Dean said revealed the fact that Dean had been thinking of the consequences of locking the angels up in Heaven.
"Well, yeah, I mean, do you want to send him back to Heaven and never see him again?"
Swiveling his back to face Sam, anger shot through Dean and escaped off his tongue. "What the hell do you think, Sam? Do you think I haven't spent hours, days even, contemplating what this would do to Cas? Or that somehow it escaped my mind that he's still an angel, even without his grace? Of course I've been thinking about him, man! He's like a brother to me."
"Then why are you so adamant about sending him and all the other angels back?!"
Not wanting to answer the question, Dean turned the key to the Impala and muttered, "I don't have time for this."
Sam reached over and grabbed the keys, stopping the engine and meeting Dean's enraged eyes.
"Dean, what is going on? You've been so anxious and impatient to get this done, but now that we're actually talking about it it's the last thing you want to do. Come on, man, I know this is bothering you and I-"
"Look, it doesn't matter. We'll find a way."
That stopped Sam short. "What do you mean? Find a way to send the angels back?"
"No! We'll find a way to save Cas, like we always do."
"Dean…I don't think there's a way to send all but one angel back, that doesn't sound like something God would do."
"Screw all that! Listen, we've been stuck in situations like this before, the whole 'life or death' decision and the 'there isn't any other way' scenarios. And we've always, always, come out of them. This is no different. We'll cast the spell as soon as we get it and figure out how to keep Cas safe."
Sam shook his head, pity flowing from him in a river. "Dean-"
"Don't 'Dean' me, Sammy. Just give me my keys."
"Not until you accept that by following through with your plan to rid the Earth of angels, you'd be dooming Cas too."
"That's not going to happen. Now give me my damn keys." Dean's voice was dangerously low. Partially from anger, but also from fear; he was afraid of voicing how he really felt, what he really thought. He didn't want his brother to see how torn up he was about it and how much the situation was really affecting him. But Sam kept pushing and pushing at the dam of self-preservation that Dean's subconscious had built and he felt like he was going to explode at any minute.
"You need to stop acting like you have everything under control. I'm your brother, I know you better than anyone, and I can see straight through this act you're putting up, alright? I get it. Cas is your friend, he's mine too, and I don't want to see him get hurt but I also want to see him. As in, you know, have him not be locked up in Heaven. Which, by the way, did you ever stop to think about what the other angels would do to him once he was up there? They'd kill him on the spot, no questions asked. You know that, right?"
Sam barely finished his sentence before Dean finally burst, letting all his emotions spread on his face, in his voice, and through his words. "Shut up Sam! If you think for even a moment that I haven't thought through every single possible outcome of this, than you obviously don't know me as well as you claim. I act like I have everything under control because that's all I can do! I'm stuck between wanting so badly to send those dicks with wings running back home with their tails between their legs but I also want them to stay because some of them aren't as bad as the others. Like Anna was. Or Samandriel. Or," he stopped and gave a meaningful look to Sam that the younger brother didn't quite understand, but somewhere deep in his subconsciousness some part of him knew what and who the look was for, "Or other helpful angels. And especially Cas. Besides you, the man is my best friend. Sure, he's done some pretty twisted stuff, but the guy always had good intentions and he was always there for us. You, him, and Kevin are the only family I got, why the hell would I want to ruin that? I've thought and I've thought about ways to keep him safe because I know what would happen if he was sent to Heaven with the other angels, but I can't come up with anything that would actually work. It's not like we can make a deal with a crossroads demon, one of us would be sent to Hell again and we're out of 'get out of jail free cards'. We can't exactly ask God to save Cas because nobody knows where the son of a bitch is. And I don't think locking Cas in a room with angel sigils meant to keep him in there would work on a thousand-something year old spell. So excuse me if I've seemed a bit irritable lately but I've got a lot on my mind."
Sam wasn't ready to back down, he still had one question that went unanswered. "Ok, but that still doesn't explain why you're so eager to send them back to Heaven, Dean!"
"Because they can find Cas on Earth and kill him just as easily as they could if they were all together in Heaven! Don't get mad at me because you think I haven't thought things through when you really haven't. Now give me my damn keys now or I swear to God I will break your nose."
They sat there quietly measuring each other before Sam relented and gave Dean the keys. He put them in the ignition but didn't turn them just yet.
"I promise I will find a way to save him. I'm not going to lose him."
There was so much emotion and meaning hidden in plain sight in what he said. Sam looked at his brother, really looked, and saw for once the broken man that hid behind the tough exterior. He was cracked on the inside, torn in so many places because sorrow and pain were the only constant things in his life, yet he kept putting a brave face on and tore down any wall that stood in his way. Sam had no doubt Dean meant what he said; he believed in Dean, believed in what he stood for and everything he said because Dean was the epitome of good and light, even though he himself didn't believe it.
So he truly meant it when he replied gently, "I know."