It was dry and acrid, typical desert heat. Pale blue sky was high above the convoy and things seemed to be going well enough, for now anyway. They were so close to being done with this stupid patrol and going back to base. Back to showers and limited AC. Casey was already complaining that she was sick and tired of the way a bunch of men humping over sixty pounds of gear each smelled after two weeks of no showers. And, Dean thought, she was right. They were pretty ripe.

They were all tired of the MRE's and the dusty water in their canteens, tired of the gravel and dirt crunching under their boots. They had been out so long that they had taken to wearing their sunglasses essentially all day; if you didn't wear them out here you'd go blind. There was an infectious buoyancy through the group, even with the Sarge barking at them to stay alert. It was too quiet here. Usually in these little villages there were people around, stray dogs trailing after the convoy in hopes of scraps that never came.

Nothing today. Today was absolutely silent and Dean was on the alert for anything suspicious. The feel of the rifle in his hands made him feel irrationally secure. They were totally exposed, out in the open, surrounded by hills. The only cover to be had on this road were the three humvees that accompanied them. Today he was point, always checking for IED's. Always checking windows and doors and shadows. As much as he hated to say it, his policy was shoot first and ask questions later. He would rather kill a civilian than risk the life of his men. There was a flicker in an abandoned house before all hell broke loose.

Sergeant Winchester had no clue how everything went so badly so quickly. They had been on a routine patrol through the outskirts of an unnamed location when a spattering of bullets came from nowhere. It was chaos. People were yelling and he couldn't get the team leaders to hear him. The eighteen men under his command were acting as isolated individuals instead of as a team. He couldn't get them behind cover because there was no cover to be had. It was a small village, maybe ten houses surrounded by hills and pasture. He hadn't liked the look of it going in and he should have listened to his instinct. The assault rifle came up and Dean caught a glimpse of a muzzle flash through a dark window. "BALTON! Call for some fucking air support!"

Without hesitation he fired. And fired. And fired, three round bursts to conserve ammunition and make sure he was hitting what he was shooting at. There were bullet holes in the houses, in the Humvees, pinging off the roofs of the huts and houses. But then it got quiet. But then...it sank in. They had killed as many men as they had lost but now he was staring at bodies. His own bodies. Like Balton; eighteen and on his first tour of duty. Like Thomson, who was on his last and had planned on never going near the Services again. Winchester needed to make a decision and he needed to make it now. He could see the ring of insurgents coming up around them and knew they were well and truly fucked.

There was no escaping this now.

His hands went up, rifle held above his head. It was surrender or die; and they might yet find a way to turn the tides. "STAND DOWN!" The vest was weighing heavy as he took in the numbers of men surrounding them and how many of his own had fallen. A gun was thrust in his face as his was wrenched away from him and he was still counting bodies. Out of the eighteen men under his command, he only had eight left.

That was ten men who were not going home to their families, to their parents, to their siblings, to their lovers, and to their children. Ten families he would have to console. Ten funerals he would have to attend. Ten of his people he would have to mourn and drink and anguish over.

How the fuck had this happened? They were on their knees. The men were patrolling along the length of American soldiers, watching and waiting and not saying a word. Dean knew exactly what was going to happen, and he knew exactly what he needed to say.

"We are ARMY strong! We don't break! We don't bend! We don't give up our friends for ourselves!" A rifle butt came down and struck him in the face, opening a wound on his hairline. "We are United States soldiers! We don't give in to pussies like this!" The rifle came back over his head again. The blood was getting thicker. The sand below him was turning red. "We give them nothing!" He was struck again. He was on all fours now, glaring up through the blood at his captors. He was still yelling, still rallying, still trying to bolster his people in the face of certain death and pain. "We are better men then they will ever be!" The rifle came down and now he couldn't see. There was blood everywhere and his thoughts were getting dull. He heard in the background an answer. It was Casey, the young mom.

"DAMN RIGHT, SIR!" And then he heard a shot, he saw her body fall an ache started in his chest. The rifle came down for a final time and he saw nothing.

–

When Dean came to it was with his medic standing over him, asking him to follow his finger back and forth. He blinked with eyes dry enough so that they felt there was sand in them. His throat was killing him.

"Where the hell are we?" He was helped up to a sitting position with a groan, closing his eyes for a minute until the world stopped spinning on him. He was wishing, praying, that when he woke up again they would be home or in a tent and they wouldn't be here. But when he opened his eyes he realized that there was no God at in this life. They were still in this rock prison and it only got worse from there.

They had nothing. They had no equipment at all. Their vests, helmets, guns, throwables. Everything was gone, even their jackets. The dog tags remained. They were left in their fatigue pants, boots, and their beige and green t-shirts. There was a general sense of disarray and chaos as he realized they were all bruised and sporting looks of injury.

"How long have I been out?" His hand flew up to his head, throbbing around the cut.

"Hey sarge, you're up just in time for the party!" There was a smattering of snickers through the remaining six men. Six?

"Rodriguez..." The medic looked at him as he handed his leader a tin cup of what looked to be the only they had. They'd been saving it for him. Winchester knew that he would have to find a way out for him and his men. They were counting on him. Dean's voice smoothed out after the water and he leaned his head back against the rock that formed their prison. Solid rock. "Rodriguez, how long have I been out? And why...why are there only six?" One door in, one door out. Damn these fucking caves. This would be especially hard on Cole, a quiet farm kid who'd never been in closed spaces before.

The medic was quiet. "Three days, sarge. They dragged off Brian and they showed us his body earlier. I guess it was this morning, it's really hard to keep track of time. They showed us his body, Sarge. His face..." His voice cracked. "It wasn't there anymore. They said that the next one who didn't talk would suffer. At least, that's what we think they said. My Arabic is...rusty at best. They're gonna haul us out one by one and see if they break us."

Dean looked at his men and saw disheartened, low men. But he also saw hope. He saw courage. He saw that each and every one of them knew exactly what would happen if these bastards got a single word. Their friends, the soldiers who had become family to them, would suffer and die. He looked at each one of his men and he realized they had all come to the same conclusion.

They were going to die.

They were going to die here, in a dark, dank cave and never see the sunlight again. They had resigned themselves to the torment they would endure, committed themselves to staying whole, body and mind, to protect the lives their comrades.

Their brothers didn't need to die as well.

"Hooah, boys." Dean cracked a grin. "This is what we signed up for, right?" There was a round of laughter that caused the door to be subject to a bang. "It wasn't for the bonuses or the chicks or the perks at the bar. We signed up to go die in a cave." The laughter increased. It wasn't as though what he was saying was particularly funny; it wasn't. It was their small way of rebellion. They were accepting their fate.

"HOOAH, BOYS!"

The resounding chorus lifted his heart.

"HOOAH SARGE!"

–

He had no idea how long they had been there. They'd been picked off and now there were only three of them. Each time the body had been shown it had been progressively more mutilated. Dean estimated they must have been there three weeks, now. Nearly a month of mind-numbing hunger and thirst. They had all lost weight (having been fed the bare minimum to keep them alive) but they were attempting to keep their muscle tone by doing small workouts in case the chance of an escape arrived.

It never did. Three became two. The eventual began to happen. His captors had begun to take him out of the prison to another cave, pressing him for information about numbers and guns and strategies that he didn't even have. They asked him for patrol routes, which he did. They asked him again and he stayed silent despite the beating and the branding they lay on him. When they dragged him back to his cell there was a body waiting for him.

That was the first night he cried although it would not be the last.

Somehow Dean lost track of the days. They kept him alive to keep themselves amused, laughing at his anguish as they delivered cut after cut after burn after burn, marking his body with scar tissue that would pain him for the rest of his life. They shot him, just to fix him back up again and throw him once more into the cell. The sergeant had never been a religious man and he found himself praying to the God that would never hear him and that he didn't even believe in. The God that would never answer his prayers. He just wanted to die.

He received his wish. He had pissed them off for the last time, kneeling on the floor of his cell beaten and bloody, spitting at their feet. An assault rifle was pressed against his temple.

Dean thought of all the people he had left behind. He realized wryly that there was only one person he had left behind. Sam. Sammy. His brother. His only family. He wondered if they had shown up at his door yet, hats in hand as they rang the bell. He wondered who would be there to look after him. How Sammy would be arranging his funeral. The empty casket they would have to bury. Dimly, in the back of his head, he wondered if Sammy had finished school.

He hadn't approved of his brother enlisting but Dean wasn't smart like his brother was. He was only good at one thing; fighting. Over the years he had proven himself to be an excellent, decorated soldier who rose through the ranks quickly enough to have been unofficially put into the fast-track to the top. He was loyal and dedicated, he loved his men almost as much as he loved his brother. Sammy. He would be heartbroken.

Metal pressed to his temple and he closed his eyes, waiting for the nothingness. What he got instead was something so remarkable that nobody would ever believe him. There was a white flash and the rock itself seemed to heat, and as rapidly as it appeared it subsided. He found himself staring around in wonder.

They were all dead. Every. Last. One.

Except...There was a man standing in the corner.

His brain must have stopped working. He must have died. He was in hell. Dean was in Hell, stuck in a cave for the rest of eternity. Hands felt across his diminished torso before coming to touch his face. He felt whole. He felt the same. And then the figure spoke with a voice like water running over gravel.

"Dean Winchester, we must leave. Now." The stranger seemed like a man who expected to be obeyed. He certainly didn't seem to be expecting the soldier's reaction.

Dean laughed. It hurt his chest and his back but he was laughing. He had finally gone nuts. He was imagining things. The stranger, dressed in a trench coat and a suit, was giving him a hard frown. The stranger's blue eyes were piercing him with an intensity that was out of place given his rumpled suit and disarrayed hair.

"Yeah fine, whatever." He had to stop; he was wheezing now and stumbled to his feet. "Like you're actually real." And yet, when he put his hand out to touch the chest, it felt solid. Warm. The stranger's head cocked to the side as the soldier spoke again. "You're...you're real? Who are you?"

"We don't have much time." The stranger's voice was urgent. "My name is Castiel, and I am an Angel of the Lord." There was the brief, impressive shadow of wings against the wall as fingers came to touch his forehead and then, in another flash of white, they were gone.

They were gone and Dean was outside with his face turned up to face the sky for the first time in God knows how long and he saw stars. The angel, because that's exactly what it had to be, was staring at him as he cried. The soldier sank to his knees as the enormity of his captivity lay on his heart and his conscience.

"Dean Winchester, I must return you. The Lord heard your plea and I am here to answer it." Fingers came to stroke along his face almost in wonder. "Why are you crying?" The answer the human gave struck him with a feeling he didn't quite know how to process.

"I'm alive, Castiel-Angel-Of-The-Lord. I'm alive." Even though all of his men were dead. "I'm alive and everybody else is dead."

The stranger, although Dean couldn't call him that anymore, gently turned him in the direction of the hill. "Your people are over that hill, Dean Winchester. You are safe. I will return to you in time." And then, as suddenly as he arrived, he was gone and Dean was left to stagger over the hill.

He was spotted almost the instant he came over the hill and collapsed as the gates opened.

–

The next six months were simply a blur. He was flown to Germany to the hospital where he was met by cameras and his brother. The two of them were left alone in his room as he cried and cried and cried into his brother's shoulder, being held in comforting silence as he began to decompress.

Then he was discharged. Sammy offered to have him move in but he couldn't do that to his brother, so he found a shitty apartment that he could afford and drank. He had been asked a thousand times how he had escaped. The Army had found the compound days after he had been rescued and found nothing but bodies. The entire place had been exterminated without a single shot being fired (as far as they could tell) and he couldn't tell them how.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. He had told them how an angel had come to rescue him and they threw him in therapy, plying him with pills. He was slipping. Dean was lost in the self-medicating, alcohol haze and was distant and cold, even to his brother. He spent every night staring at his pistol, wishing for the guts to end it. It was all gone. He had lost all his men. He had lost his career. His body was battered and broken. They'd had to cut open his arm elbow to forearm in a series of seven surgeries to correct the pins and the break and he was on number three. The soldier had long stopped taking the anti-depressants, the anti-psychotics, the benzos and the opiates, hoarding them instead. Then one night it was too much and he simply took everything he had and washed it with a bottle of whiskey.

The angel had never returned. Everybody thought he was crazy. His world started to spin and blur out and as he fell to the carpet, waiting to die for the final time, that tell-tale white flash returned.