The demons had somehow gotten Castiel – they'd gotten him and taken him to this town where, within the perimeters, he was cut off from his angel juice. Though he could still heal, still know, he couldn't smite, couldn't stop anything that was going to happen. The people who lived in the town were the normal inhabitants who had always lived there, unaware that this was now a quarantined zone for demonic experimentation.

Castiel woke in the lobby of a small rustic inn/tavern at the side of town, surrounded by a shallow stream that only added to the atmosphere, as the only way in or off was over a well-worn wooden bridge. The innkeeper's daughter, an energetic, kind young thing with red hair, greeted him when he woke, though he couldn't remember in the slightest where he was or how he had gotten there.

Blinking slowly, he returned her greeting and got to unsteady feet. He left the tavern not long after that, intent on finding out just what was going on. When he left, walking down the dirt path, he first encountered a warehouse on the way. His attention was piqued by the extraordinary amount of bomb materials, stacked up high next to bags of animal feed. Castiel eyed it curiously, but he continued on his way toward the edge of town, passing a marketplace on the way until he reached a gate marking the edge. Upon trying to pass through it, however, he found himself unable to proceed as if there were an invisible force field in the way.

Returning to the town, confused, he sought out a sheriff to question about the bomb supplies in the warehouse. The woman was concerned but upon arriving at the warehouse, asked him if it was some kind of joke because there was nothing in there but pet food. To Castiel, this only increased his confusion, because he could clearly see all of the bomb stuff, but apparently she could see nothing of it.

Frowning, he left her and eventually came back across the marketplace. While he was walking past, he noticed that a section of greeting cards all had his name on them. Finding that even stranger, he approached the cards, ignoring some human who was commenting on the cards, wondering who on Earth had the name 'Castiel' and why there were so many different cards personalized to that name.

The first card he selected had a generic greeting message on the front along with his name written in blue glitter text. The inside, however, was blood red with black text, saying "As soon as you stop reading this card, you will be shot in the head with an arrow." For some reason, he didn't doubt the truth in that statement and there were so many kids and people around whom he didn't want to have to deal with the implications of seeing someone murdered in front of them, that he kept his eyes glued to the card and shuffled away as quickly as he could, making sure to grab the rest of the cards so that no one would inadvertently read them and find themselves slain.

Time passed and as it did, the demons became more and more overt, killing the townspeople whenever Castiel attempted to resist them. Eventually, the town became more and more decrepit. During the weeks or months that had passed, Castiel took up residence in the inn where he had first awoken and he had grown close to the red-haired girl there. Her and her family were the only ones in the town who were on his side and he craved to protect them as much as possible.

It was in part because of this that he gave in to the demons, letting them do as they pleased with him. Crowley came to check on the demon's progress with him one day and he had stood by while a demon had forced Castiel to his knees and throat-fucked him. The most Castiel did to resist was use one of those arrow-trap greeting cards from before to have himself shot in the head, but the demon simply pulled the arrow out and told him to keep sucking and he did so without further complaint.

Crowley, pleased by this, decided that they were ready for their next phase.

Years had passed since Castiel was originally captured and the demons had created a huge casino as a sort of base of operations for their illicit activities, led by Castiel, who had lost all traces of his personality and was singularly focused on advancing the demons' goals of world domination. After being released from that town and brought to the casino, he had had the full extent of his power restored, and yet he never rebelled, nor did he wonder about where Dean could have been.

That is, until he saw his old friend one day, after he and the demons had taken over much of the country.

Dean had come to the casino with this rich, older blonde woman. While walking along the skywalk, he'd passed Castiel who was dressed up with an impassive expression. The two's eyes had passed over one another… and each simply continued walking as if they hadn't seen one another at all.

That was the last time Dean ever saw Castiel.

The world was ruled by Castiel, who presided over it as if God, ruling from the casino as generations passed, outliving even the demons who had once enslaved him, until the end of his own time came, so many thousands of years later. In this old age, Castiel only thought of one thing – Dean. Somehow, in the beginning, he had been convinced that Dean would have rescued him, but the human's life had passed by as meaningless to him as a fly's.

How had that happened?

For the man who knew too much, this one thing escaped his knowledge. Seeking to know this one last truth before he expired, Castiel turned back the clocks, back through thousands of years, until he arrived back at that very short segment of time during which he and Dean had both lived. He sought out the human who had once almost been his and found him in a dark alley, so drunk that he was mixed up in between the trash cans half unconscious. Without having to say a single word, Castiel opened Dean's mind, slipping into it as easily as he might a tailored sock.

A cursory exploration revealed at once something wrong and it took only a little more digging for Castiel to realize that there was absolutely nothing more than darkness where Dean's love for him had once been. Somehow, it had been taken from Dean, removed and leaving nothing but a gaping black hole where memories didn't quite match up.

It seemed that Castiel hadn't been the only one affected by the demons, though Dean seemed to have no idea just what it was that he had lost.

Filled with regret for abandoning Dean so easily, Castiel turned back the clocks even further, until before the demons had gotten Dean's memories. Knowing that changing the past would mean changing his future – and indeed, intending to change his own future – he smote the demons that came for Dean, vanishing before the human as the very future he had come from was rewritten, leaving Dean more than a little confused, but with his memories of Castiel intact.

Perhaps things would be different this time.