"Relax, Dean," Sam Winchester told his brother for the fifteenth time, leaning back in his chair at the crappy table in the crappy motel whose name he'd already forgotten. "He'll be back soon."

"It's been hours," Dean Winchester insisted, wandering restlessly around the room with his favourite gun in his hand. "He could've gotten run over or got stuck in a friggin' tree for all we know." He glanced at Sam as he walked past his brother's seat at the small and crowded table and made a noise of impatience when he noticed what his brother was looking at. Sheets of old, yellow, and brittle paper were thrown across the table, covering stacks of thick dusty books that looked a thousand years old. In Sam's big, careful hands was a clay tablet about the size of one of those books he had lying around, the strange markings carved into the tablet undecipherable.

"Will you stop that already?" Dean asked, frustrated. "You're not going to be able to translate that freaking Death Tablet no matter how long you stare at it."

Sam gently set the tablet down and exhaled heavily, running his hands over his face. "I have to try, Dean," he said, his words muffled. He rubbed his jaw and looked up at his brother, who was still pacing around the small and dark motel room, the gun in his hand quivering impatiently. "We can't find Kevin anywhere," he said, shrugging helplessly, looking up at dean with those freaking puppy eyes. "I mean, he could be dead right now and we wouldn't know. We can't even find out since all the angels have fallen and it's not like we can ask a demon, not since we closed the gates of hell. I have to try to translate this, Dean. There isn't anyone else."

"You don't have to translate anything, Sam," Dean snapped, irritated yet again at Sam's stubbornness. "We closed the gates of hell, the angels aren't a freaking problem anymore, and we were done with all this Word of God crap."

Sam sighed. "Dean-"

"No, just listen to me Sammy," Dean interrupted, ready to tell him brother again the same thing he'd been trying to tell himself all month. "You can let go of all this now. You don't have to deal with this insane crap we go through everyday as hunters anymore. It's over, man. We came, we saw, we beat those sons of bitches and it's finally over for us. You can have that normal life you've always wanted, you can carry your girl off into the sunset or whatever the hell you want now, 'cause it's over. I don't care if it's a freaking tablet for Death, you can smash it with a hammer and throw the pieces into the ocean. We're done."

"She's not my girl anymore, Dean," Sam replied after a moment of silence. He'd been staring down at his hands on the table during Dean's rant, but he glanced up at his brother when he mentioned the girl. "And it doesn't matter anyway-" he broke off as there came a hard rap at the cheap wooden door of the motel. Dean glanced up, his nostrils still flared from his annoyance at the stupid, fucking situation and stared vacantly at the door before he realized it must be Castiel. He strode toward the door in three long steps and pulled it open, the gun still in his hand.

"Cas! What the hell, man?"

Castiel, weighed down by his dusty trenchcoat, had his hands cupped around a small ball of white feathers. He looked up at Dean and looked back down at the little bird.

"It has a broken wing. It can't fly anymore."

Dean stared at him with one hand on the doorknob and one hand on the trigger.

Castiel sighed a little. "Just like me."

Dean fell against the door frame and let it carry him as a weight settled on his chest. No angel should be without his wings. Especially not his.