Holy, Holy, Holy

by tco-deanirae

DCBB14:Castiel listened, and learned about the plot of using a brave, righteous man to start a the Apocalypse. He sacrificed everything to ensure it'd never begin. It was 2008 and it's probably still Wednesday and Cas is keeping Dean safe, away from everything. Everything remains determined to get him back where he belongs. Dean doesn't know where that is. He misses the purple dog.

gethsemane

At dawn I search for you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry, parched land where there is no water.

(Psalm 63: 1-3)

He runs. The branches cut through his skin as tiny knives, but he doesn't think of it, he barely registers the sensation. There are others, more meaningful, more overwhelming, more wrong. It's cold, air hurls itself into his throat and lungs painfully as he swallows mouthfuls of it, of the humid ice, of the dark, his eyes frenetically searching for light, for an out of these thick claws of pines and their arms which try to stop him, to keep him here, have him found quicker.

He knows he won't make it, he knows. He's not stupid. His ears are sharp in their focus and worry akin to a fox chased down by hounds. And oh god, oh shit, oh everything that could ever go and fuck itself and stuff that is adjacent, he's one. He is exactly this: prey, a game. He hears it, the sound he would never mistake for any damn thing else or at least not anymore, it comes. Doesn't need to hurry. Has him already. He was found the moment he took off to run.

And it doesn't hurry, not at all. And this, Dean's bones cry in raw fear, is cruelty.

So he runs, he runs, he runs. Legs shaking, weak and pitiful things that wouldn't take him half as fast and far as they would have in the days of his youth. They bleed, soles of his feet dark with red and dirt, too tender to keep him steady on the move amidst the unforgiving woods. But he needs. Needs to go where there's light, where there's his brother. To tell him at least. He doesn't know what. It's over, he knows. He's gone. Gone, gone, gone. But he runs.

Goodnight, Sammy.

That's what he would say. He runs, aware that he won't get to say them anyway and –

shit.

He hates flying – his brain reminds him the milliseconds between tripping over a forlorn fucking root and falling harshly on the cold ground. Small stones and pieces of wood sink into his bare skin, his ankle howls in pain, but the only thing he hears is The Sound. The only thing he's wired to hear and his muscles betray him, they let go and make him ease like a Pavlovian mutt. A moment later he discovers a next level of dread, he tenses anew. Footsteps. Slow, steady, certain, crushing dry leaves and rocks without caring. He hears that rattling in his spine, he knows he will end like this dirt, like these leaves, his spine marred by teeth, by the sole of a boot. At least this he predicts. He spits out dirt, attempts to lift himself up, clutches the nearest tree for support, its bark biting back into his hands. But he stands up. He won't die like a bitch with his face in the ground. He will stare into the hollow eyes of his demise. He does. And it has the nerve to smile at him somberly, gaze wrapped in crow feet, thoughtful and personal.

"Oh, Dean," he hears rolling out of that vile shit of a mouth, so sweet it twists his guts to hear, all in soft concerns, in lilies, in whys, in you shouldn't have done thats, in warmths that are meant to mock his misery, his shuddering in the cold, his struggle for freedom. He wants to spit right into it, he wants to gnaw, to kill, to break the neck from which the words echo. Mostly, he wants to puke, because it just makes him sick, the affection and pity blooming in the malice. Chamomile among thistles and nettles and thorns.

No more words come, only his end. With green, wide eyes, he watches the hand rise, slowly go towards his head and he thinks: gonna cut me and bleed me like a goose is killed and bled. He's going to die like a goose. And his sharp tongue, sharp goosy teeth won't help him. Not this time.

After the first touch he collapses, limbs heavy, swallowed by gravity, he can't move. Even his mouth, very soon, will go weak.

He's being lifted and thrown over an arm, a sack of sand – he is this much, just pounds of flesh to be fucked or cut into. That's how hell rolls, he thinks. He sees the trees, the end of them, the false hope slowly go further away from him as he is carried into the opposite direction. To a deathbed he's being taken, to a dog bowl, maybe.

"No," he mewls, weak and weary. "No. No, no, no," he goes on like a broken record for as many slow steps as his throat lets him, sounding more and more like a hurt kitten and he's certain as shit the sick filthy bitch is getting off on hearing him compromised and vulnerable like that. Nothing seems to listen. "I'll kill you," he mutters with painful effort, "for this," he promises and afterwards, he manages to say nothing more.

A hand that holds him by the legs, takes a sordid liberty in stroking his calf with a thumb, the notion raises his tiniest hairs from the dead. And it goes on, that ugly hand, drawing ninth fucking circles of hell onto his skin. A sob dies in his throat and he feels he is wilting alongside with it.

"It's fine," he hears before his lids betray him also and a wave of unconsciousness sweeps over him, buries him under and suffocates all thought.

gospel of Dean

From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness- only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with olive oil.

(Isaiah 1:6)

I.

Dean is resting on his stomach, body pliant, willing and open for contact, outright calm and by completely nothing unperturbed. He's relaxed. Most of the time, he is. Why would not he be content? He's contemplating the fact that Cas's – Castiel's – okay, this is getting difficult sometimes, although at this point it probably shouldn't be – Jimmy's… Jimmy's sans Jimmy, ergo Castiel's cock is sliding as merrily as relentlessly between his buttocks. Hardly even going anywhere around his entrance enough to count as anything, truth be said, just keeps sinking in, overtaking and filling the nameless, sensitive lands, thrust after thrust. And Dean's fine with that, now that he thinks of it. Cas is draped over him like a canopy, almost like he's perching on his shoulder. Well, his wet mouth certainly is and this simple, albeit apparently for both of them quite fulfilling friction, is making Cas moan into his skin, moan like you moan when after a battle you find solace, when you drink the first so long awaited drops of water after hours spent on a desert, he's exhaling relief and old air straight onto Dean's body. He's not moaning like you moan when you fuck. It's different. But Dean knows for a fact that Cas is going to moan like that exactly. He's going to fuck Dean and Dean is going to let him, so, in Dean's head it almost raises a question: how the hell did he get there from whatever the fuck he's been before? Question lingers stuck, neither buried nor brought up into the light of whatever it is they've got here. Before is a matter that stays a rock in his boot and it will rattle and annoy him if he makes a move. He doesn't, not openly. He mulls over his before without chewing. He does it often. Sometimes he thinks he's almost close to remembering.

He can't recall that today. Today as a term or even as concept itself probably needs to be redefined. Today is a very long period. There always is today, and yet, a day isn't something he actually gets to see in person. It could be the beginning or nearly the end of the night as well. Time in general is a very fucked up thing to him, an otherworldly muse whose language he doesn't understand for shit. Sometimes he closes his eyes and his soup is still warm when he opens them. Sometimes he closes his eyes and his limbs are dead-stiff, hair and scruff going wild on his head when he reopens them and blinks. But does it matter? Cas is going to fuck him today. Dean is the to do list. There are no other things he's supposed to bother himself with for the nearest future. Because as of now, Cas is still in the middle of his ritual. Dean likes to think that it's a matter of the guy spreading his essence, his scent wherever he only can dig in, giving out countless blessings, becoming one through the heat melting both of their skins into one sweaty, smelly, needy pile of man-shit – that exactly, but holy, because this is what they are (or so Dean's been told, well, minus the whole man-shit part, that's entirely his own interpretation, which Cas certainly wouldn't share as he's fixated upon the whole holy thing). Communion? Eucharist? Was it that? Yeah, no – Dean is fairly certain eucharist comes later, which probably is the most unsettling euphemism for a blow job one can get. That is, if you still have it in you to be unsettled with things, because Dean doesn't (and sometimes he supposes that he should, because he does remember general people stuff and people do have it in them to be unperturbed by things). Crap aside, because this wonderful piece of dick is actually making it hard to focus on subjects that are not related to the very cool and interesting and hot idea of him getting fucked, so maybe it's just a thing of better preparation? Nah, can't be. Dean doesn't think it can be very useful done like that (was it ever), although he does feel there is some oily, scenty stuff going on down there and it makes him think that any second now Cas is gonna pull a Rafiki, make a smudge all over his crack and declare him a "Simba." He's sure he saw that in a movie more than once with somebody. It was animated, so it was a kid movie. Why would he watch a kid movie, though? He himself was old enough to connect the scene with cheap porn at that time, so he must have been a teenager. Why the movie, then? It's not like he had anything to do with brats, not that he knows of? Something is amiss. Dean wishes he would remember crap. But Cas says Dean's too good for crap – well, putting it very shortly this is what Cas says because he does talk a lot about Dean and how good and better and best and sacred he is, so that would probably sum up the message, too. Luckily, Cas is very busy burying himself deep into him, breath heavy, eyes shut in either concentration or oblivion – or maybe angels can do both simultaneously and Dean wouldn't be even that surprised, then again, Dean never is surprised anymore. What with? – he ponders as a satiated moan escapes his mouth. Having Cas busy at the very cheap price of angelic dick playing his ass like a violin (which, then again, is more of a bonus than a cost, now that Dean's own junk reflects on it, and it does think very hard and heavy on said matter), Dean can try to lock himself inside of his own holy thinkdom and figure out why the fuck would he even know he could be declared a Simba. Seems fucking important. Important enough to let his mind slither away from fucking, which – considering his options and his awfully limited ability to concentrate – is a lot.

"Dean," Cas pants at him and pushes harder, a reprimand. Once, twice, thrice – so damn conscious of Dean's mental slip.

Yeah, close enough to Simba, alright – Dean thinks somewhat bitter-sweetly, but he very well knows that both the low, short on the vowel tone and the rougher thrust do indicate that after all:

no,

he cannot lock himself up inside of anywhere that isn't where Castiel sees

– as suggested in one of the paragraphs of Cas's hipbones sharply reminding Dean's back of themselves, or in the section of Cas's fingers sinking deeper into his arms, either or – Dean guesses. Anyway, he's got the fucking memo.

If Dean weren't that chilled, he'd be irritated, because, first of all: how, and also how about that was important, Cas.

Meanwhile, as Dean attempts to withhold his internal sulking regarding the reminder of his transgression, the heat radiating of the shield of Cas's body gets lifted and so does the pleasant burden of his cock. Apparently – Dean figures – he's lead to a change of mood with that little unpermitted journey to the inside of his. Said change, being foreplay more or less over.

"But you do got some stuff ready to make it work, right?" he starts casually, wanting to get a hint to make an assessment on his current situation and future possibilities regarding the subject of fucking.

"Myrrh and oils, Dean," comes the calm reply. Like it's obvious. Like Dean had already asked it four hundred twenty nine times. Yeah, well, maybe he did. But then again, how was he supposed to know that.

Myrrh – Dean thinks – of course. What else could there be.

Dean turns around to face Cas. His features are focused, mostly busy on the task of putting enough of the mixture onto his hands. His eyes lay on Dean kindly. And so do his palms a moment later. Dean loves Cas and his hands. They saved him and rebuilt him when he was close to nothing. A half corpse drowning in his own blood. Something that almost died so it could be born anew. That's what Cas said. Said he gripped him tight and raised him from perdition. The fuck is even a perdition? – Dean remembers himself thinking a long, long time ago. So, naturally, in ripe but sour fruit of that act of thinking, Dean asked him once, back in those distant times where everything was still an enigma to him: "what was I before?" and Cas – then it was Castiel or at least Cas tried to be a Castiel (and failed) – he said: "the purpose." But that didn't tell him anything. Well, on the other hand – it did seem to tell Cas everything.

Dean insisted, of course. He insisted as much as he only could insist on anything back then – which wasn't much, as he still was weak, limbs all heavy, almost motionless, sunk into the bed – probably the same one. No, not the same. That one had bars and wheels and it smelled of sick people and the mattress was just a fucking sponge and below it there were just more metal bars. It was a horrible bed – this is just how hospital beds roll, after all. It ain't written nowhere they're supposed to be lacy-fancy or shit, so they aren't. Well, maybe in Dubai hospitals where Sheiks get to face the concept of their mortality, they are both lacy-fancy and shit and probably thirty dollars more. But this is fucking Indiana (isn't it?), so no (still no, regardless of location being or not being Indiana. Wouldn't matter even if it was Utah, though). It's not even the point, Dean reminds himself. Because this bed? This bed's got a real nice, comfortable mattress and it creaks a lot when Cas fucks him. It had a headboard once. Didn't make it long, though. Cas's hands are delicate, buzzing with reverence towards Dean's skin, focused on a holy mission of their own when they touch him, but the truth is, man, Cas's hands are really fucking strong. It's even more fun contemplating their musculature now, after he's had a great sight on them fucking up a damn headboard, and for a second there, it was actually more breathtaking (literally) than the dick ramming into his ass at the exact same time. Shit, that wasn't what he was trying to think through, was it. Thinking about getting dick while being minutes away from getting said dick is just greedy, Dean scolds himself, but his cock begins to ache near-painfully at the memory, anyway. That's a stupid attention slip, damn it and that and three other things damned they be more. Where was he? Perdition? Perdition. What the hell does this even – oh, there he was, apparently. So, he was told, after enough of him insisting and his terrified eyes pleading for anything to be revealed to him, that he lived here, in Indiana, pretty much since dinosaurs died or at least since his own personal forever, that he worked at a store – no, not that – at a slaughterhouse, that's what it was, if he does remember, well, doesn't remember correctly – and that one night, after his shift, he was attacked by some people he had some debts with. And Cas had found him, wee hour of the morning. Rescued him. "Why don't I remember any of that?" – he asked.

Cas told him: "God freed you of the burden."

Cas, dear Cas, the only fucking thing that he's got – Cas, took care of him since whatever happened had happened. He was close to thirty. What was it then? 2008? What is it now?

"What is it now?" Dean asks.

"It's Wednesday, Dean," Cas answers politely.

So it was 2008 and it's Wednesday now and Cas still keeps him safe, away from those people, away as fuck, even. And Dean still isn't entirely sure what perdition is. Perhaps it's the pain he foggily remembers. Or the nightmares that sometimes come and haunt him and claw at him until Cas kills them again and again.

II.

Cas is smiling at him as he places one of his hands on Dean's arm and begins to rub the oil over it, it gets warm very fast. Its scent is mixed up with something, probably the myrrh thing, but he recalls the original one perfectly: it's baby oil. Dean remembers the smell of a kid with baby oil on his skin. He feels fond of that stuck-in-fragrance memory. His hands remember rubbing it into lean, fragile wrists just like mothers do. He's almost sure he somehow knows that tiny hands have grown out firm and strong. But he doesn't know any children. And he isn't a mother. He begins to feel uneasy. He wants, no, needs, to fucking know if the child didn't hurt its knees, if it is alright, if it has grown up well fed, happy and healthy. Tension is steaming off his eyes and Cas deciphers it like he's got an artisan title of reading Dean's face. The other hand joins the first and thus, together they maneuver around Dean's neck, chest and sides and he leans eagerly into the warm touch, his attention scatters, he can almost hear its wings flipping in a song of fuck you, Dean, try longer next time, and it goes off like a flock of birds rushing whatever the hell elsewhere all out the sudden. Dean sits up slowly, meeting Cas face to face and chest to chest, and soon, also his back is embraced with the touch of myrrh and hands and oils because he's destined and holy (this one he's not even sure he believes, but when he says it, Cas does things that make him believe all over again) and he is also a child missing (and this one he doesn't tell Cas, not ever). The way Cas rubs the oil in, it isn't how a mother does it. Because Cas is going to fuck him today. His hands, in how passionately they touch him, they already are kinda fucking his skin. That's how it feels like. It makes Dean go all too giddy. Wednesday sounds good for fucking. Wednesday sounds like everything and right back at it – everything sounds like Wednesday.

"Cas, your hands are fucking my skin," Dean points out merrily. "Is it a Wednesday thing?" he inquires. He'd like to have a time-measuring point of orientation. Wednesday feels like a decade already. He's wondering if it ever even really began or if it just is. Maybe Wednesday is, like, the day-angel or something. Like Cas – he doesn't recall Cas starting per se, and Cas just is. Especially when Cas fucks him. Then Cas is the most. "How much fucking there is until it's Friday?" Dean tries to pull his little plan through.

Cas's smile widens and he leans in to meet Dean's face. He kisses his cheek, as he says:

"I'm not fucking you, Dean," Cas attempts to make a correction. "I'm loving you."

And Dean thinks yeah, no, this is the opposite of straightening this out. Of course, most of the time – yes, Cas really, really does love him. Cas loves him the fiercest in the world. No place for dispute here. Loves him like no one ever could or would. Fills him up in all the voids Dean didn't even know he had. Cas cuts his hair, gives him a shave, helps him wash himself, helps him eat, tucks him into bed, sleeps next to him, the guardian lovely thing he is.

III.

There were times when Dean could do most of these things and many others (some of them he knows he misses but doesn't remember what they were, he's just sure they were important) by himself. He can't do that anymore. Something bad happened to his main hand one day and he can't make any use of it anymore. It hurts Dean from time to time, it looks like a broken twig broken into smaller broken twigs. Makes him sad to look at. He knows he was meant to have strong, capable hands. Hands that would be saving people, hunting things (he's not sure if he hunted a thing ever, but Cas says that one day he will be saving people and that he won't need a capable hand, but a capable heart, so it's okay). Dean didn't know what happened to the one he did have capable or why, so when he asked, Cas told him – it was the first time he saw Cas cry and it became a thing that occurs from time to time ever since – that this is the price that sometimes needs to be paid for sainthood. Said that God took the life of his hand away but had given him plenty of blessings and an angel forever his in reward. And then Cas kissed his hand and he kissed and he kissed – so piously and softly Dean thought it was being caressed with Cas's angel feathers not his mouth. But it hurt him still. Ever since, Cas would do everything he could to be Dean's hand, so he wouldn't feel its loss (but he does). This is how much Cas loves him. He protects Dean from all the evil. Loves him so much that there were times when Cas would even take him out for walks, real walks, like outside ones. He can't have them anymore because the people that hurt Dean in the first place could find him. Cas won't let that happen because he loves Dean too much.

Dean's last walk outside also happens to mark the day Cas fucked him for the first time. Fucked so damn hard, Jesus Christ that hard, beyond any possibility to repeat (and there were attempts, very close calls some of them – Dean thinks), but just before they crossed all the lines there were, Dean remembers himself going eager and trustful as tender kisses and I love yous kept falling softly on his eyelids and mouth like stardust. So there it is: the only connection, if there even is one.

Because when Cas fucks him, it doesn't feel like loving. It feels like fucking. Meatgrinding, sometimes. It's impossible to lose yourself so deeply in fucking (as Cas does when he does) and still call it love. Dean remembers making love, with nice soft ladies who smelled of spices or flowers and they chuckled so bright like they were the summer sun and they purred beneath his touch like pleased kittens. And it was all so tender and free. He remembers making love even though the names of those fairies fled. It was so, so different. This? There isn't enough of space in the head to have it there when the sex floods. With Cas – it doesn't just occur, happen, take place, small temporary things like that, no. It floods, it pollutes, it annihilates all other life forms. And Dean is the Ark. It's just the god-sent rampant element and him – the human construction. A storm can't love or hate or anything – it just is. Dean finds himself very fond of fucking like that (and, honestly, he wants that dick kind of now), but he appreciates the distinction.

"Nah, you're almost there, Cas," he exhales softly, compassion an ornament blooming through the wrinkles around his eyes as he smiles with resignation. Wants to stroke his burning cheeks, wants to teach him, make him understand. That even though Cas does not do this on purpose – he's wrong.

"Almost where, Dean?" Cas asks warmly, staring deeply into his eyes with innocent curiosity in his own. He pets Dean's face lightly with his palm and he wants to know, wants to know so fucking much, Dean sees.

There are so many things in Cas's eyes. So many shades, so many emotions. Love, affection, fascination, eagerness, vitality and curiosity – beautiful things. Dean could stare and stare and see no end of that. Cas's eyes are Baikal condensed into this impossibly small space. He looks into them and he's drowning. He raises his messed up, overholied hand and strokes Cas's face back. This is as close to those eyes as he'll ever get, he thinks. He can't dip his fingers into that mesmerizing, luring waters, so he sinks them softly onto the skin that covers depths and eons and impossible things he doesn't quite understand, but feels that angels are. Cas's pupils dilate in response to that caress. It's night time Baikal now. The blue is but a glow, something residual. The pretty things – they went under.

All there is left is a thin membrane separating Dean from the exact moment when Cas is going to fuck him today. Soon. Good. Very good, he thinks. Dean is going to take the chance, again, to show Cas the difference to make him understand. Every time Cas fucks him – Dean makes love back to him in reply, or at least so he intends to, as he does get his mind and plans often lost amidst the tempest brought to life by their foolishly blind and thirsty bodies. Still, he hopes perhaps one Wednesday or something, Cas will notice it isn't the same.

"On the verge," Dean explains while there still is time to think and to speak. Because this is exactly where they are. This is so obvious that a 'duh' is trying to make its way onto his tongue but he doesn't add it in the end. There is very little point in duhing at Cas.

"There isn't a verge to that," Cas assures. "I'll love you always."

Yeah, well, Cas doesn't appreciate the distinction. Maybe angels aren't designed to appreciate the distinction. Maybe they just are. Dean can't really make a judgment here – he's never met any other angels. Which, all things considered, is kind of weird.

IV.

He opens his mouth to ask, but Cas kisses Dean on the mouth and Dean lets him in. His lips are patient, slow, thorough, tasting. "I love you more than God loves creation," he dares to whisper surely to the warm, welcoming hole that Dean's mouth is and Dean knows Cas is going to fuck him so bad today it's gonna actually be unheard of. Thank fuck Dean doesn't have places to be because if he did, he probably wouldn't make it on his own legs, anyway. He doesn't mind. He's somehow certain his father would if he heard what Dean's needs came down to, but he doesn't, not at all. He's excited about all there is to come. He trusts he's going to be taken care of. He's always being taken care of. He looks into Cas's knowing eyes and kisses him back earnestly, burying the fingers of his working hand into the thickness of his unkempt hair, getting a calm, content moan shivering lightly against his lips. And he doesn't feel bothered in any way at all a mere breath later when the game of theirs leaps off from the moment of static barely touching, becomes a rush of wet sounds, mouths holding a bit too tight against one another, bordering on biting, creating a symphony of exchange: stale air for stale air, breath reeking of the ill escaping just to get more of the same in return. And all there is to it is neediness and moist that conducts the electricity of their urges which sparks as their tongues somehow still manage to withhold action and restrain themselves this time. He tries to sneak his own in, he's not that good in waiting, but Cas doesn't play along. Dean withdraws and right away he understands. There are so many different ways in which he's going to be devoured today. Sounds like Wednesday's got a lot in store for him. Which, wow, probably exceeds his general expectations. He's not sure why today is so special, or why today got to be the fuck day at all, but it isn't something he needs to find out all that much. This can wait.

"Dean," Cas whispers, taking away softly some messy streaks of hair from his forehead, making him feel stable again, bringing his thoughts back into focus. "Remember that I love you," he says firmly, warm palms still cupping his cheeks. And he feels safe, full of faith, steady. He wants to joke back something along the lines of I'll try to remember, because that's honestly all he can do these days: just try to remember things, but he sees no point in saying it out loud, he doesn't want to worry Cas with letting him know how much of the simple things keep slipping away from him before he can catch them and make them stay where they belong, so instead, Dean decides to lightly kiss Cas on the tip of his nose, wondering if he in any way, managed to replicate the featherlike soft tingling Cas's caring touch gives him. He does it while inhaling the scent of his skin, all ointments, all meds, hospital linens, leftovers of smoke, ashes, some herbs he can't quite name – Dean takes it in with closed eyes, catalogues every single note, cherishes it, because smells, he realized, is what sticks to him the longest, manages to beat the sad, slow and quiet downfall of his mind. Sometimes he wonders why Cas smells of burned things and ashes. There is one more scent he used to catch, a long, long time ago, back when they first collided – he, the broken man, and Castiel, the fearsome savior angel. Dean caught that one right away when he woke up and he can still remember he was screaming his throat out and shaking until he passed out. Then he smelled it again and it stayed between them for a while, tainting the air: the odor he knows as well as he somehow knows the baby oil, as if he were born with it already on his hands. He never mentioned it when his mind was clear in the past, he never mentions it these days. But he remembers it was there. He doesn't even know if he wants to find out why.

Why, dear Cas, was there blood everywhere in the air around you? Why was there iron contaminating the tips of your fingers, Cas? Why were there cut-through fish, all over your hands, elbow high, on your chest when you leaned in? And the most terrifying of them all: why does Dean know that smell so damn well he can distinguish it in his sleep, by heart, can feel it from a distance and always know: this is how human blood smells like when it's fresh, that is how it reeks like as it gets old.

If he was a butcher and he cut through flesh of chicken and cattle: how.

V.

He doesn't wanna find out, this is something he actually wants to forget, but can't. It's hard, especially that today there is blood on Cas's tie and it's new, unsettling. Dean doesn't wanna ask why is the damn thing so carelessly put on inside out, why is it stained. He's even more eager to fuck, he wants to bathe his senses in Cas smelling like sex, like sweat, semen and fucking herbal salad seasoning, whatever but not that. And he wants to see Cas becoming the virile, the life, sex beyond human wrapped in a body, clothes gone, tie gone, just not that. Maybe Cas knows that, too, and that's why they make an unfathomable shift within an instant from tenderness and peace into fuck sessions so purposely thoughtless there is nothing left but erasing and forgetting, something so senseless and raw even animals don't go that far. It's idiotically violent what they do, Dean thinks. Balancing on the thin line of pain and not yet hurting, but either way, it's overwhelming and dulling everything else. Dulling the things that should not be. Dean just isn't sure whether it is more Cas's hidden goal or his own, in the end. But then again, he decides, does it matter what the medicine is made of as long as it does its damn job?

Does not, he tells himself and feels his mouth absently widen into a smile, still resting on Cas's nose, drawn to that man and that body as a hopeless moth is to light and burning warmth. And that's what Seraphs are made of: light, warmth, fire. Maybe that's why there's this faint trace of all things burning left a residual tint on his skin. Dean's gonna get mouthfuls of Cas's body and the stench of smoke is gonna stick to the underside of his tongue again. He's gonna melt into Cas and be formed into something new by his fingers, his mouth, his flesh and the memory of a fire is going to follow and it's gonna nest on Dean's skin as well. And it's gonna haunt him until Cas cleans it off. Cas always cleans it off. Good thing Cas doesn't forget things like Dean does. Good thing indeed. Dean breathes Cas whole in again, lungs full. He feels ready to be ridden over by all of it. Exhales. Cas's hands abandon his cheeks and wander down his neck, his chest, his belly, in accord to the air escaping his body. They pause and stay on his hips, their hold light, but undeniably present. Telling. And the innocent lingering of soft fingers on his bones – it is a visceral inquiry. Twin to Cas's delicate smile. It's only the corners barely going upwards, but for Dean, it's moonhanging, actually. Cas's fingertips are asking. The warm sinuses into which his digits bend and Dean's skin gracefully sinks into and fulfills, they're asking. Corners of Cas's mouth are asking. Dean knows Cas so well, he can pinpoint the angle where the wordless question begins and the angle where it becomes conviction. He sees it most often when Cas talks about who and what Dean is. Now is not the place for it, though. Now is rolling down from sacrum to profanum softly and quietly like a tear no one wants to talk about. Saints and their angels have got weaknesses, too. Or then again, maybe it's their twisted take on strength. That's yet another thing Dean supposes will remain unknown, but it hardly matters as long as it helps them and doesn't hurt anybody. He really hopes it doesn't.

"So, you good?" Dean asks what he knows is a stupid thing to say, but he believes it is right or at least polite to make sure, before, well, all systems are go as fuck and there is no place for debate anymore.

"Only when you are," Cas assures, smiling as fondly as if they weren't discussing a ruthless act of sexual intercourse, but stuff like good pastry, nice perfumes, kittens, puppies, holding hands, watching children grow up, that sort of shit. Dean finds he's gotta stop looking for comparisons because for whatever reason the last one decided to tie down a knot in his throat. One he doesn't know how to swallow down.

He reacts by leaning in, body all falling softly into Cas's radiating heat, aligning them like puzzle pieces meant to fit, letting his forehead rest against Cas's. Ready to take in and swallow different stuff – stuff he just knows how to deal with. But Cas doesn't move. He waits. His palms sweat and shiver with want, but they obediently wait. Of course, Dean remembers, because he's apparently forgotten (well, it's been a while since they last fucked, if that's any excuse). Cas won't take that as an answer. He has to hear that Dean consents.

"Yes, Cas," Dean sighs into his face. "Yes."

"Open your heart to me, Dean," he commands, managing to sound so, so powerful through a smallest whisper, and everything in Dean just yields.

He's not even sure at this point if his heart can possibly get any more open than it already is, so he reacts on instinct, showing how open he can be and spreads his legs wide, gets them on both sides of Cas's lap, straddling him as Cas lies down on his back, his gaze washing all over Dean like waves of ocean water that starts to boil over.

"Good," Cas compliments proudly, voice soft, but thick with something that isn't just approval and praise. The word is velvety in its sound. Stroke it one way and it's delicate, stroke it from below and it's darker, it's lust, that's what it is – Dean knows and as he ponders upon it, he can hear the cap popping open again. Immediately, he gets overthrown by that smell once more. For a moment, something sinks inside of his chest, hits the bottom heavily, making him tense involuntarily as it shatters. This is not what baby oil is for. It's for taking care of sore or sun burned elbows and shoulders of a little kid with a smile full of gaps, with a tender mole next to his nose that just begs to get booped every five minutes. A kid that's all sun, hazel and auburn with girly hair that always smells of—

One finger in. Hallelujah. Shit, it really must have been a while since they last fucked, even though it didn't seem to be that long to Dean as it apparently does to his tight ass. Maybe that's just him and his misadventures with time again. But it's not his most frustrating problem for the moment. The familiar but yet not deciphered scent flees, even though Dean was so close to naming it he could almost lick it, it leaves a tingling on his tongue that is telling him he wants it back. Cas groans in reprimand, Dean groans in shock, taken aback by the sudden intrusion. He should have seen that coming, he thinks. And most likely would have, if he wasn't thinking about stuff he probably made up in his own head. As in, the one head that keeps fucking with him approximately all the time in ways that probably should not be fucked with. Their eyes meet, Cas studies his face concerned and Dean nods to let him know it's fine. That he's right where he should be. Where else would he possibly be? – he wonders as his mind teases him with images of black doors, sounds of them creaking shut and vivid smells of old leather. Doesn't know, tries not to care. Cas is here and he matters more than torn pieces of things he's incapable of grasping, things which keep crippling him as if both of his hands and also his head were useless and broken. He tries not to think about it.

"Hey, don't be afraid," he coos. "I'm with you. Won't go anywhere, okay?"

They stay frozen for a moment while Dean's eyes do the best they can to honestly convey that everything is in fact all right and Cas breathes in the assertion slowly, taking it apart, putting it back whole again, measuring the weight of Dean's heart put into those words.

"I know," Cas says, swallowing hard. And there it is, Dean thinks, proud of himself and his knowledge, this is the moment where conviction comes in, the air in their room now buzzes with slight electricity as the warmth of his voice makes place for stones and iron. "I know you won't, Dean."

So he takes advantage and kisses Cas's certainty-swollen lips, takes him into his embrace and makes him forget. Forget whatever the fuck aggravated his Cas like this. Makes him forget just like Cas makes him forget, this he can do, he hopes. Cas holds him tight but painless against the warm and lovely muscles of his chest, Dean can feel their hearts pounding, demanding to jump out of their bone cage just to grind against each other, to unite, to melt, to become one raw endless everything. But things can't go deeper than flesh lets them, he concludes rather sadly. No matter how passionately Dean kisses, he will never reach Cas's grace with his tongue, won't dip his mouth into its blinding light and lick out its taste. And it doesn't even matter how deep, how erratically, or how meticulously, or how many times Cas thrusts into him, regardless of force, need or angle, he will never touch Dean's soul with his dick. Will never come anywhere deeper than his freckled ass. Admittedly, that certainly doesn't seem to stop neither of them from trying, though. But to put those futile, yet pleasant attempts aside, Dean already feels there is another way in which they manage to achieve that connection many, many times. Like when they just are in this bed and all is silent. And Cas just holds his hand and maybe even pets it absentmindedly with his thumb, simply looking at him and smiling, Baikal eyes all light and clear again, his mouth doing nothing but whispering small, kind words that don't even need to make sense because Dean is already drifting into sleep safe and sound, then he feels it: the communion, two cores becoming one unstoppable, stable force. Feels the grace keeping him warm, a soft buzzing in his skin being happy just to have Cas within his reach.

Now, all there is to have and definitely pay attention to, is a finger prodding lightly at his prostate, awakening it until discomfort blooms into sparks of pleasure, making his breath hitch and heat up, making his thoughts burn into nothing as easily as paper turns into orange fireflies and dust. So Dean welcomes the sensation, bucking against Cas all he can, wanting to be filled thicker and better and his mouth begins to forget to kiss back, to kiss at all, to do anything of coherence in general as it just groans and pants and demands, calling out for the pleasure that it knows it's about to come.

And Cas, dear Cas, his angel of mercy – Cas, he of course so, so willingly gives, so fluid, yet subtle in his stealthy motions Dean doesn't even know how is he laying on the bed again, Cas's chest rising and falling hotly in his sight, his breath moistening the top of his head and those fingers, two of them in then out and in again, and once more, turning into three, digging in, twisting and turning so rapidly Dean barely makes it to manifest his demands. Among all of this he manages to recall this is like the first time he spat out Cas instead of Castiel, throat needy, constricted and burning. Dean mutters the name as the fingers come, he mutters it as they go. One moment, before he even knows he does it, he hears himself beg for the dick.

"Just fuck me already, Cas!" his mouth hisses out and Dean doesn't believe his own ears, as he's sworn to himself to speak and think of love, and here he is, asking out of all things – for this, like that.

Cas withdraws his fingers with a gasp, begins drawing lines on Dean's inner thighs as he waits patiently for his breath to calm down.

"I didn't mean it just like that, Cas, 't was an I love you-ish thing, I…" Dean begins when his body lets him speak again, but some of his words still come out ragged, panted. But they sound flat to him right then, he doesn't know why.

"I love you as well, Dean," Cas interjects and assures him with an answer to what he was just trying to ask for. "And love is the only thing I'm going to touch you with. Will you trust me with that?"

"Yeah," Dean nods, feeling himself getting stretched again, his body sparkling with awareness of Cas, slick with baby oil, aligned against his hole.

Cas pushes himself in one go and the fiery fullness blinds and deafens him like noise of static. There is a galaxy burning and throbbing inside of him, he calls it by its name, voice hoarse, and in an answer – it raises itself and lifts him, strong arms of that endless galaxy keep him steady and it blesses his blood with stardust as it boils and stirs upon the firm touch, it holds him, calls him back, moaning his name against the tender skin of his throat – throat now thrumming with the song of songs of small groans and harsh exhales. Moaning like when you fuck, finally, Dean manages to hear between the thunders of sensations echoing through his nerves. And he's calling Dean's name with a voice so dreadfully low, want boiling through its notes, Dean barely catches it out among heated breaths of liquid fire. This is how the angels sing. This is how they praise and this is how they fuck.

VI.

Cas grips his hips vicelike, lifts him, fills him, moves him around pulling his hips up and pushing them down, controls all the flow of what he gets to feel and it makes Dean's synapses border on burning out with madness, his muscles and skin begging exhausted for any kind of a final, but right when Dean gets to feel the light sparkling at the edges of his senses, it gets shut down and Cas pauses. Waits until their lungs and throats manage to settle down, until the vehemence of the air that they share flees. Restarts, setting a new tantalizing rhythm. Sinks himself into Dean in an unrushed wave, a high tide – takes over, washes away. Again. Fills, stays, sways his hips so languidly his presence barely pulsates inside of Dean, a matter of remembrance, not motion, does nothing more, calms him down until his body almost forgets what it got so lost in. Fucks into him too unhurriedly to not make it excruciating to Dean's flesh and mind, keeps his eyes steady on him all along and Dean doesn't dare to look away even though it scares him to death and beyond, those eyes all knowing, not telling and in every way devouring and unrelenting in their calm, simmering hunger. Cas contemplates Dean's body reacting too sensitively, too madly to his smallest acts of mercy of him shifting inside of it. Thing is, Dean doesn't even try to put on a show. He wants the nearly missing friction so much he crumbles into shattered gasps on his mouth's own accord, noises escaping him without neither knowledge nor consent. Cas brushes past his spot like he's an innocent zephyr, like he plays and pretends he doesn't know how to get there each time. He pulls out without warning, and suddenly, less steady, for a moment – empty, lacking balance, Dean knows what is going to follow. Cas thrusts back into him rampant, merciless, his expression unchanged completely, his hands slide lower hungrily, fingers digging into Dean's tender buttocks as if they were clay and he impales Dean onto himself, perfect angle, time and time and again, it feels like it's the speed of sound, Dean claws at Cas's neck, at his shoulder blades, scratches overwhelmed and mindless until Cas: the otherworldly source of liquid fire he's so bravely straddling, hisses back in pain. Dean's frenetically searching for any kind of purchase before the abruptness can make him lose his ground and feels like he's being almost torn in two, in five, in twenty. There are moments where he swears Cas's dick prods at his liver as he fucks into him raw, as if thoughtless, as if he were the angel of destruction and nothing else and Dean feels like he's chained to a comet, losing air, gaining a whole new orbit, swallowing thousands upon thousands of miles and space dust as he chokes on his own saliva, and certainly right then, if not chained – Dean feels like he's being fucked by one. He exhales the light of its tail as his insides are throbbing with its core. It erases all thought, all coherence, both hopes and burdens gone. And later, when the time for easy breathing will come, he won't know how to believe that the power that Cas is could have ever possibly been anything less than the absolute he so foolishly lets between his legs, that it could ever be Jimmy Novak from Pontiac, Illinois: a man of blood, bone, marrow. And nothing more. Couldn't have been – Dean will ponder yet again trying to go through the exact same concept (and still won't grasp it) as he will be regaining air while Cas's load will run down his trembling thigh unbothered and yet unwashed – couldn't have been a man because Cas is a million-eyed ball of electricity and light who's laying eggs inside of his heart and brain and as they crack, they bloom poppies and roses, whole holy gardens of motherfucking edens – and how can a man be akin to that?

Dean knows it's been long enough, as he feels the white fire of oblivion build up inside of him once more (third time this Wednesday, he counts), Cas lets him burn in it, lets Dean tear his throat into pieces as he cries out his undoing like a rite sang by a wounded animal, and for a second there, he's sure he screams out his soul by accident as well, he ends up hanging bonelessly limp on the cross of Cas's body. And Cas holds him steady, the sack of melting meat that Dean became, but he can still feel Cas's final frenzied thrusts, hears him spitting our hoarsely, somewhere in between wailing and roaring, as he comes: "my Dean, my Dean, my Dean," and it makes everything inside of him shiver: a triforce of awe, acceptance and completion. When Cas spends himself in his ass, Dean can feel it in his fucking spine. He wonders if it will turn into a layer of pearl mass if it dries. This is something he hopes for. He could make his spine become a string of pearls and he would pull it out through his mouth and put lovingly around the little kid's neck – the one's who Dean knows he left behind but does not remember the name, the one who deserves best things always. And Dean's spine is the last damn solid thing he's got. But if it would make the hazel-eyed wonder smile at him, he wouldn't think twice before giving it away. Kid's probably already grown up, no longer in need of his protection or his spine. Doesn't matter that much. Dean would offer it anyway.

VII.

He feels like he's breathing in splinters through his mouth, his throat has been taken too far. Cas gives him water and helps him drink. He puts the empty glass away. Relieved, Dean lets himself fall heavy back on the pillows and doesn't even think of getting up in the nearby future. Cas melts himself into his space once more, kisses his thighs with chaste, wanders up and sinks his mouth wetly but softly into his navels, drowns in his bellybutton, marks the smallest crevices of his stomach and chest with his tongue. Dean's tired body barely manages to shudder in reply as the fleeting, moist warmth comes and goes. Cas's fingers trail along his arms, soothing, hypnotizing motions Dean is too tired to verbally inform he appreciates. They go up to his neck and pet, but it's Dean's face where they stay the longest. Lightly they fall onto his lips, following their outlines, tracing them until they remember it again. They wander up his eyelids and stroke his lashes, counting, blessing them. Dean's eyes are closed, but he feels it in his bones Cas's eyes are taking him in the same tender manner as his fingers and mouth. He begins to drift away, call of the sleep louder than ever as the calming power of the touch seems to do only the opposite of keeping him awake. Cas plants a single kiss on both of his heavy lids and another one on his forehead. As he brushes his fingers against Dean's lips once again, he croons, "hold on for a moment more. Can you do that? You'll sleep better after getting washed, I promise."

Which is probably true, except that he isn't sure if he's capable of holding on for a moment more. Every single nerve that he's got demands to be turned off, exhausted from abuse. He mutters something that is supposed to match his indecision slightly leaning towards no. Cas gets up from the bed and raises him anyway, holding him almost bride-like in a secure embrace against his chest. Dean groans.

"You'll thank me later, Dean," Cas assures. Dean resorts to wordless grumble again. He wouldn't be that sure. What if it fucks the fresh pearl mass up? What is he gonna do then? "You always say that, but in the end, you do prefer waking up in a decent state rather than indecent," Cas sighs. To what, if Dean weren't that sleepy, he would answer with the way you fucked me was rather indecent, but he is that damn sleepy, so he just goes with the shortened version and with some effort, manages to mutter, "fuck." And that is hardly what he wanted to say, so he feels stupid.

"I believe you've exceeded your limit in this area for today," Cas says as he carries him, unrelenting. It gets much, much colder as they leave the room and get into the corridor. Damn basement halls and their lack of heating. He begins to shudder again. Well, at least the cold wakes him up a bit. Wakes him up a whole damn lot actually, before they make it through all the grimy and freezing labyrinths of the damn place. Fucking ugly basement halls and their lack of heating. Curse them threefold.

"Fuck this place," Dean snaps, frowning at the walls, not bothering to elaborate as of to why. Cas knows, anyway. Somehow Dean always ends up greeting the basement like this after playtime is over. This much he remembers doing in his life. So he's certain Cas didn't forget, either. Cas's got a superb memory, after all. He used to tell Dean stories about prophets and medieval kings, about dinosaurs and old school Greece, about Neanderthals and Eden. Well, not exactly in that particular order, but he did. Dude's been around for long enough to see it. Dean, on the other hand, doesn't even really know how long he's been around or what he had the privilege to witness in his days, if anything at all, and it sucks. Cas fills him in on some details, but it's not the same as actually remembering experiencing any of it, is it.

"We're almost there, Dean," Cas says, snapping him out of his thoughts again. "I already prepared the water for you. I've got blankets and towels, you're going to be warm."

"Awesome," he comments, deciding to accept the offer. "You gonna bathe with me?"

Cas seems to consider it for a moment.

"You're too tired. If we want this to be quick and efficient, we can't have you distracted."

This is a valid point, Dean notices.

"But I'm going to spoon you, then," he bargains. He didn't get half as much of a hold on Cas as he feels he should. He likes the simplest ways of having him close the most.

"I will be whole at your service, Dean," Cas agrees.

"Good," he concludes, making it sound like he's actually got the last word somewhere.

VIII.

The bathroom of course still looks like crap. To be honest, Dean's not really sure why he would even expect it might be different this time. Gray and green tiles even dirtier than they were. Morgues look cleaner, to be frank – and while Dean isn't exactly sure how he knows that for certain, he just knows that he does. Old, mostly leftover from the place's golden times and probably out of date bottles are still lying around the floor in a complete fucking mess. That bed on wheels which keeps making him think about dead people each time he comes to face it, or what's worse – to sit on it, is still standing in a useless attempt at being an accidental decoration. Despite knowing all there is to know, he would enjoy taking a walk over the room anyway, just like he does it from time to time. It's not like he spends all the fucking eternity tied down either to the bed or Cas's dick, so he kills a couple of hours every now and then on sightseeing. If roaming around empty halls humming and picking up locks on abandoned storages and rooms and bathrooms like those can be called sightseeing. He hardly ever gets to fool around the upper floor, though. Cas just doesn't let him there on his own, regardless of how well he takes the dick each time he's about to ask for going to the other floors. So, with what he does have to work with in terms of space, he pulls the whole exploration gig in parts. He likes the idea of having something left to discover. Smallest shit, too. Like the bottles here. He hasn't smelled every single one of them yet. He wants to try a new one. He even kind of wants to walk down to it and pick it up on his own, but the dull ache in his body gives him a clear message that this is so not gonna happen now. He even fucking hisses when Cas softly puts him into the bathtub. Didn't lie about the water: perfectly nice it is. Dean can't say the same about the towels. Towels aren't towels. It's yet again tetra shit damn cloth. Needless to say, the blankets are hospital ones as well. Itchy.

"Did you take a look to choose?" Cas asks him politely after turning on one light more.

"Yeah. I wanna try the one with the ugly flowers on it. See it, Cas?"

"I've got it," he answers as he walks into the direction of the shampoo Dean's curiosity hunted down this time. Cas stares at the bottle like he's curious about it, too. "Why this one?"

"I think I've seen that," Dean vaguely explains. All he knows that he did actually see that and he's certain that it's somehow connected to the little bothersome enigmas of his. He's sure the bottle is relevant. He's got yet another feeling in his guts. One telling him it isn't something Cas should necessarily need to know. In fact, Cas very much shouldn't.

"Flowers or the bottle?" Cas smiles at him.

"Both, I guess."

"Then I'm certain this is going to please you," he says, eyeing the bottle intently as he puts it on the corner of the tub, quite within Dean's reach. Like he suspects something's up with the inconspicuous thing but deliberately doesn't act on this knowledge of his. The bottle is almost entirely empty. It will have to do. Dean's just not sure for what.

"What are they even called?"

"Chamomile, Dean. People often look at them and think of them as weeds, but they're really useful gifts. They only look ordinary," Cas muses, voice soft and calm and he strokes Dean's head and cheek when he speaks. "But they are wrong and deceived by their eyes. They can't see the beauty and the wonder, the stunning design and the power to heal."

"You still talking about the flowers, Cas?" Dean inquires, leaning into the touch he so hopelessly feels addicted to.

"It doesn't hurt to take two subjects at once."

Some people say the same about dicks, probably – Dean thinks. But he brushes the crappy remark of his off, since it isn't what's really crawling in his head at the moment. Besides, Cas wouldn't buy the bullshit, either. So he's going with honesty on this one. "You're saying people think I'm a weed?" Dean asks, staring solemnly at his thighs. He can't help but wonder how weak they've gotten compared to what he foggily remembers they once were in the grand old days he fails to coherently recall. And how much paler, paper-like his skin became. He just knows he was better and stronger and more. That he had a purpose which he served. He can't tell why, but he's sure his father would have kicked his ass into next Sunday for letting himself deteriorate like this. His unmatched stamina and agility were all he's had. He was a guard dog. A fucking Rottweiler. Jesus, he hates dogs now. Shit. He shouldn't have let his thoughts run there. His calmness slithers away from him and he trembles for a second before he wills it to stop. Castiel's gaze darkens and they both know it wasn't missed by his attention.

"No, Dean. You think you're a weed, despite all my efforts to convince you otherwise. You're not what you think you are and not what you think you were," Cas says, ignoring Dean's slip for the time being. "Don't scold yourself thinking what your body is good for. It's just a shell for what's really important and irreplaceable. There are people and beings much, much stronger than you and they still wouldn't be brave enough and capable of achieving half the things you could. You're not your muscles and bones. You have them, you need them, but you aren't them, Dean."

"Yeah, well, you do like that shell," Dean points out. "You pay a damn lot of attention to it for someone who claims to have no interest in it."

"It's the only way I can touch you," he replies, putting great emphasis on the last word, tone of his message suddenly low and even a bit sharp, implying there is no place for discussion. "And the only way I can preserve you and keep you safe. If anything happened to your body, I wouldn't be able to fix it again to the extent I already have. This is why I need to keep you intact."

"Is fucking me keeping me intact?" Dean ponders with amusement.

"No, but it's keeping you content," Cas retorts.

"That's true," point taken, Dean thinks as he admits it. "But, boy, isn't it keeping you damn content either, huh, Cas?"

"Yes, it is," Cas says solemnly and despite being said so docilely, it still has a dangerous sharpness to it, at least in Dean's ears. Maybe cause he can literally still feel Cas's road to contentment in his fucking bones. Whatever it was or wasn't meant to be, that word, one thing Dean is sure of: point reclaimed.

"But the truth is that everything about you, Dean, makes me content. There aren't things about you I wouldn't love."

Okay, Dean thinks, fuck this game, point once more gone, case dismissed. He finally looks back into Cas's eyes and see that they are bright and clear. He cherishes words like those the most when Cas's mouth isn't driven by desire. That's how he knows he means it. Of course, it's not that he thinks Cas doesn't mean it when he's horny. It's just that he's not entirely sure if he understands his own words then. Storms do not understand or mean things. They happen, they are. And then they pass. Right now, Cas is as far from being turned on as he can be. His mind and heart are clear. His need is drying a pearl mass in Dean's shell, as Cas had so nicely put it. The danger of misunderstanding is gone. His lovely Cas is a pleasant shore to rest on. So Dean with all honesty reciprocates the smile Cas was giving him all along.

"You know it kinda makes me feel humble when I hear it." And God, after all this time, it still does. Dean feels there's dirt in his soul like you feel sand in your boots. Why the fuck ever would an angel want to glue him back together and nest down with his fucked up feathers alongside his useless ass is beyond him.

"You shouldn't be."

"Sorry I balked at you, though," Dean sighs instead of arguing. He knows there is no point.

"I don't mind."

"Why?"

"Because I look at you and I know it's still worth it. All of it. Because there are so many blessings I get in return," Cas explains like it is the most obvious thing in the world.

"Like my ass?" Dean prods mischievously.

"No," Cas just says plainly. "That's par for the course at this point," he chuckles wistfully. Like he's ashamed of something. Of that, of them, maybe. Or maybe just of the semen dried on their hands and bellies and the thirst of flesh perhaps now latent, but never really dying in their mouths. They are so damn stupid. But then again, Dean supposes, it's not like they have a whole lot of different stuff to kill their time with (at least he doesn't, because every now and then Cas does leave and perform whatever-secret Cas things elsewhere and reeks more of burned shit after he does). So yeah, he pretty much intended to at least act a bit offended of the par for the course comment, but in the end, Cas is right. He always fucking is.

"Hard to argue with that," Dean eventually agrees.

"What I mean, Dean, was being loved so purely by something so profoundly amazing like your heart. You're above Heaven's plans for you."

"Which are?"

"None of your concern anymore."

"Is anything even my concern now, though?"

"As long as you're with me, no," Cas answers sharply.

"Then how am I so holy, then? If it doesn't count?"

"Because you're holier, Dean. You're the Kingdom on Earth."

"Well, I did come," Dean snorts. Cas sighs. "What?" he groans.

"You're not taking this seriously."

"It's kinda difficult to take shit serious when we're both naked and you're about to sponge wipe my nipples, Cas," he laughs jovially. "And we're, you know, right after interacting in the other sort of biblically."

Cas frowns sourly at that.

"We'll talk about this when you're more dressed and less distracted, then."

Dean just nods. For a moment neither of them speaks. "The water is going to get cold. Do you mind?"

"No, go ahead, you go and paint my meat with bubbles."

"Do you wanna smell this one first as well?" Cas asks as he already opens the bottle and brings it into the general vicinity of Dean's face.

Instinctually, Dean intends to grasp it with his main hand, but second guesses himself and goes for the weaker, unbroken one. He closes his eyes and inhales the chemical, but unmistakable scent. "Jesus" he almost moans out as a visceral tide of sudden knowing washes over him. "Jesus, Cas," he goes on, eyes filling with tears. "I remember this."

"Remember what?" Cas squints slightly. Dean can fucking hear it that Cas ordered his voice to sound unfazed, when the truth is that whatever the fuck is going on in that head of his, is quite the opposite. It takes one to know one.

"This smell on my hands," he says, careful of his choice in words. "Being a kid. Happy. Happy to have this smell on my hands, it meant good things."

"What good things?" Cas pets his hair tenderly as he gets his head wet and softly, so fucking pleasantly, massages the shampoo – this particular one – into his scalp.

Dean hums contently before conjuring an answer.

"Don't know that yet. Kid things, Cas," he offers, chuckling to brush that off, letting his voice sprawl into a purr in the end, knowing it will without fail curl neatly around Cas's ears, attention and man-parts.

As for his innocent words alone, this is quite the bullshit, of course – what he said just now. He sure fucking knows now. Kid things are one little boy who pouted a lot and it meant so, so much when he finally laughed. A boy whose hair he washed since the dawn of time, always with a cheap chamomile shampoo stashed in a duffle bag, and then mocked him for being a flower princess while burying his nose into that girly mane of his. They were both kids. His own hands were scrawny as hell and the world barely delved into the nineties, torn jeans were in, and he, terribly bony, young and not exactly masculine in presence himself, wetly dreamed of getting in both Courtney Love's and Vedder's pants. He recalls that from his early teen years, it had to be back then. If he's in his thirties, so is the chamomile kid. If he's still alive. Dean just hopes he's taken good care of him before he grew up and he had to let him go. It had to be like this. It had to. Dean can't even imagine himself letting the kid go without having both good and a safe reason to do so.

"The rest of it will come back to you one day, I'm sure," Cas says warmly upon rinsing Dean's hair. And he doesn't say it like it's a bad thing. So yeah, it had to end well. If Cas hid shit from him with a malignant intention to do it, he'd have to be pissed with the prospect of Dean getting his past back, right? But why the hell does he hide things in the first place?

"And what is gonna happen then?" he inquires.

"Nothing is going to change the present, Dean. Nothing will happen."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I can," Cas cuts sharply, but after a moment he rethinks his strategy and elaborates. "Knowing about the things that once were, won't bring them back. Life continues as it is."

"Like this?" Dean gestures at the solemn space of the bathroom.

"Like this," Cas confirms and decides to consider the conversation done as he shifts his attention to washing Dean with a soap bar with scrutiny he counts as deliberately exaggerated in an attempt to close any opportunity to continue with the subject.

"Easy, tiger," Dean sighs. "I'm still kinda tender here. No need to scrub my skin off."

Cas stops, exhales tiredly and drops the soap back into the tub, keeps his arms on both of its sides, his head hanging low, not looking back at Dean.

"What's the matter, Cas?" he asks, but the angel just waves that off with a displeased groan. "Underholied again?" he muses. "Lower on the juice?" Dean tries once more forming his question into a more understandable one, clearly worried and not giving up on finding out until he fucking does. To this Cas looks up finally and lets the lingering air out of his constricted chest with tiredness. Dean sees his tensed muscles go slack.

"Yeah," Cas admits, his voice making it clear he's displeased with his state. "I… it can be a test to my patience sometimes, I'm sorry, Dean."

Dean nods. He gets that.

"You're tired," he says flatly. "Not used to being so weak, huh. It's pissing you off."

"You might not be wrong," Cas agrees after considering that sour-faced for a second. "Seems to be crucial."

"I know, right?" Dean snickers. "I know what it's like, I mean, just look at me here," he says and Cas's expression of general calmness falls for a moment as a prelude to a frown makes its way there before Cas consciously forces it to stop and retreat. "And I do happen to have a little something for that problem," Dean promises and beckons with a wave of his hand, so Cas would come closer. "Come on, boy. Lemme fix you. I know how to fix big, strong cars, I'll sure know how to fix you right."

Cas gives up on being this hard to lure and instantly Dean pulls him into his orbit, making him almost fall into the tub. Cas doesn't protest when arms get thrown around his neck or when his lips are first sealed and then ripped open with a kiss. And he certainly doesn't protest when Dean opens his mouth to exhale an obscene moan, a needy sound swollen and leaking with desire against his stubble, a message so viciously clear it makes Cas's palms grip tight at the edges of the tub and shiver. Cas groans. Growls. Dean isn't sure what that was anymore. "That's right, boy," he murmurs, pleased with the success of his design. Licks Cas's lips once and pulls away just so, in a tease. "Who needs all that anger and sadness when you can feel this good, hmm? You taught me that," he says, hears Cas holding his breath after a tiny gasp. "You taught me that, Cas," he repeats in a nearly soundless whisper right against Cas's mouth. This time Cas kisses him first, using threefold the force Dean put into his attempt. Kisses back tiredly, sloppily as Cas claims what's his passionately, slowly fucking his tongue into the hotness of Dean's mouth. Dean knows he's earning himself extra points on his chances in getting a supply of that chamomile motherfucking gem. "You could fucking eat me whole and I'd still let you," he sighs with a hint of exasperation. He's not just playing cool for the shampoo, that's a bonus. He means it. Was it about anybody else, he'd be scared to think this much, this far. But it's Cas. "You wanna know what your mouth is, Cas?" he murmurs and both of them stop doing anything at all for a moment, save for their eyes staring at each other in bone-deep awe. "It's my home." To this, Cas lowers his head and shuts his eyes as if in pain, but a second later he throws himself back at Dean, feral, thirsty, drinking away his skin, swallowing mouthfuls as if Dean were holy water, or fuck, the holy word even, and before any of them really knows this, since it happens so fast, Dean figures, he's being held and cradled again, out of the tub and its warm water, limbs weakly entangled around Cas for safety. He turns his head around, letting Cas suck at his throat and sees where they're headed to: the ruined and abandoned shit that looks like an exam table on wheels, which ruins his mood a damn lot, so he groans about the whole prospect because damn it Cas, that's fucking Vegas of germ, like, new world order of unsanitary but Cas doesn't quite get that, not now when he's lost so far he's deaf to coherence, not now when Dean's own turned on complaints are swollen with need, sounding more like a message of take me rather than take me away from there in particular, and Dean just can't help himself sounding like that. Not with Cas's hands and mouth all over him so hungry and burning. So, albeit reluctantly, he does end up landing on the fake leather-covered table face first and ass up, somewhat discontent, but accepting the outcome of his strategy. He calculated the risks, but shit, he should've known Cas ain't math. Cas is fucking quantum physics. So there's that. His culpa. Cas dives his mouth into his ass, taunting his sensitive hole. He moans into the leather, which unfortunately reeks of old unwashed sweat (could be his) and covered with stains of long dried blood (his also). He breathes it in, having no other choice, but still consciously bucks into Cas's tongue, ass too fond of its doings to have mercy for his nose. Shame to admit it, but it's a price worth paying anyway. "That's right, angel-boy," he teases. "Eat it 'til I'm white, bare bones. Eat me 'til you reach my fucking spine, Cas, do it, need that spine out, you hear me," Dean groans and Cas wastes no time in putting more effort into the mysterious artistry of his mouth and wraps his fist around Dean's dick to make the symphony of sensations more opulent.

Cas eats, marks, sucks him out and jacks him off until Dean whimpers, until air burns him, until his fists go loose once more and awareness leaves him, too drenched to stay awake. Last thing he's mildly conscious of is the fact that he'll got to add his own jizz to the list of crap which make the damn crap filthy. He's gonna burn the shit down. Or maybe he'll ask Cas to do that since he's so keen of playing with fire. Either way, the thing's gotta go – he concludes.

"Cas," he breathes as he gets wrapped in a blanket and carried again. Cas just mhms at him in slight interest and encouragement, so he continues. "It's fucking either me or this wheel-bed," Dean warns.

"I've taken too much from you today, a mistake I won't repeat," Cas notices somberly, perhaps slightly taken off by Dean's absolute lack of coherence.

"Uh-uh," Dean contributes wearily, not really knowing if he intends an okay or a yea, right with this.

"You should really—"

"I want the flower thing, though," he interrupts while he remembers.

"Go to sleep, Dean," Cas sighs.

And Dean goes.

IX.

He's stuck in a limbo between still being asleep and getting abruptly awoken. He screams, or that's what he think he does, but not even a smallest sound escapes his mouth. It's like his lips are sealed, he can't get them to part, his raw howl of pain gurgles quietly inside. And it hurts so much, so much. He's struggling, thrashing around, crying out for help as the canines dig into him and rip his flesh away and he feels the warmth of his own blood spreading thickly beneath him. He knows how his bare kneecap and his shinbone look like now. He only dreamed of a purple dog. It was a good dream, a good dog, it went awry somehow, suddenly. Finally, Dean's body catches the fuck up with his startled half-consciousness, he bolts awake, body too and he's oddly relieved to actually hear his own screaming piercing the dead of what he assumes is the night. There's a weight pinning him down, trying to hold him steady, a low voice crooning, saying something, anchoring him in the now, at least trying to, but his limbs are still fighting those teeth, his heart is still beating terrified, erratically, trying to manage one beat more, as if it were just about to stop forever. "Shhh, Dean, shhhhh," he hears, the gravel sound slowly calms his joints and lungs down, but his head isn't yet ready to process any of the message. Mindlessly, Dean's body succumbs to the song as it shhhs him further. He likes how it sounds, trusts it.

"She laughed," he tells it, voice hoarse, breathing still not calm. Sounds leave his throat hitched, as he manages to spit the words out with effort. "The white-eyed woman," Dean tries to explain, but still remains reluctant to open his eyes and confront his surroundings. Not yet, he tells himself. Not yet.

"Dean," he hears, louder, definite and heavy this time, rolling down unto his senses and echoing thunder. It makes his thoughts sharpen with focus, always does. There is something on his cheek, bit cold, colder at least than his own hot skin. A palm maybe. His eyes hurt from keeping them deliberately shut that tightly, so he opens them to find out anyway as he mutters the final part of his explanation. He knows this is what the word asks him to do.

"When she sicced it on me, she laughed." Cas, since it's him as it turns out and he now guesses he would most likely be expected from the start, weren't Dean that delirious from the horror, stares at him with pain and concern marring his sad, sad, awfully, fucking ominously sad face. "It ate me," he adds quietly, almost in a whisper.

"You're with me, Dean, you're alright," Cas assures, stroking his sweaty forehead with his thumb. "It didn't."

Judging from the worry and nervousness staining Cas's features, Dean is still rather convinced that yeah, it did.

"You look scared," Dean points out, Cas shakes his head and offers him a slightly too sharp no, only validating Dean's already steadily rooted assumption. "Did she do that to you, too?" he inquires. This time Cas's answer is firm and certain when it's given.

"No, Dean. And she won't hurt you ever again. Nothing will find you or hurt you. I ensured it."

"And what about other people?"

"The threat is gone."

"So she's just in my head now," Dean muses wearily, exasperated with the doings of his own traitorous mind on yet another level, and he's too damn tired to indulge himself with considering it right now. "Don't think I wanna sleep anymore. Ever," he just groans, deciding that this is going to be his final answer for this particular problem.

"You won't find her there," Cas promises, hiding and shielding Dean in a warm, reassuring embrace that finally eases him completely, making his occasional shivers stop bothering him at last. "She'll never ruin your peace again, trust me, Dean," he states without a hint of doubt. The words instead of cheerful, to Dean's ears sound eerily sadder all out the sudden, but still Cas's voice remains unruffled and serene, so it is a bit confusing in general. As long as the calmness is sincere though, and Dean can tell that it is, he doesn't tear his head into shreds over it all that much. He believes it's going to be fine cause he hears Cas having faith in that, too. That's enough. That will do.

"You gonna make her go?" he asks sleepily.

"Yeah," Cas says wistfully, halting the caress of his thumb, but not taking his hand away. "I'm gonna make her go," he tells Dean, kissing his forehead softly.

Dean playfully murmurs something along the lines of "Such a cheesy fuck you are, man. Forehead kisses, Cas," and lets himself drift away into the so needed sleep once more, safely veiled by Cas's arms and his promise.

She never came back, the white-eyed woman and her beast. But neither did the purple dog. Dean kept searching and whistling for something in his road and golden wheat-painted dreams, but he didn't know what he was trying to call exactly.

magen

My shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower.

(Psalm 18:2)

Dean Winchester, you're saved – that was the first thing he heard. Or maybe the last one. He doesn't know anymore. But he would not exclude both options being true, either. He'd hear that often, he thinks. Like it was something stuck at the back of his subconsciousness even as his ears were deaf and dead. He'd hear it whispered reverently, soothingly into his synapses, into the murky waters that make him him.

You're saved, Dean – it, not a voice, but a warm, light-brimmed and pure certainty, would tell him, would repeat it, would assure him. You're saved. Hush.

Maybe he's making this up – yet another debauchery of his wound of a head – but Dean recalls he might have even said okay once. Not the best reply to go with, but there. That's how it went. Probably.

Okay – he groaned tiredly although politely. And then he hushed as told. Oh, he was told so kindly. He wasn't afraid. You're saved – it told him, after all.

gospel of Sam

The watchmen making their rounds in the city found me.
I asked, "Have you seen the one I love?"

(Song of Solomon 3:3)

I.

Sam Winchester dreamed and day-dreamed about the act of slaughtering Lilith many, many times. More and more often it would haunt him as the final hour was getting closer to them, casting a shadow that would soon envelop all shapes, all ideas, all things. There came a moment when fear bleached his sight and judgment into white blank nothing through which only the picture of her bloody, unmoving corpse could manage to break. Even Jess was not to be seen in his mind anymore. Neither was Dean. And Sam went deaf to his wishes and pleas. He knew it still would be better not to have Dean's fond voice than not to have him there at all. It was the only end he agreed to see, to all else his eyes were forced to be blind. Back when they were on the way to New Heaven, he could hear Lilith's stolen body falling dead, last mouthful of air escaping her lips, the sound being the only fathomable song of justice.

But when he got to twist the blade inside of her shivering with sobs and mutilated form, he wasn't sated. He wasn't pleased. And most certainly, he wasn't done. It came out to be the opposite. Dread pierced through him like wind. It wasn't even because of her sudden outburst of honest terror affecting him, it wasn't the loss – that yet had not wandered under his flesh deeply enough, it had not yet wrapped itself around his tendons, but he painfully learned it would come, it would linger. It was about the change at first – he could feel that something abruptly went off within him the moment she died, as if his whole entity echoed with a distant noise of a lever being pulled far away and something long sealed getting opened. His blood began to stir because he could viscerally tell that behind that creak something was lurking. It was angry, as if in a wrong moment wrongly awakened. It didn't matter to Sam – the lurid awareness had been nothing more than a single pinch of electricity invading him for less than a blink.

There were different feelings boiling inside of him then, present until this very day with the only difference being them going painfully cold. Confusion, fear and loss – the universe he knew collapsed. Lilith was dead, but Dean was gone. Missing.

From her grasp, from his reach. He heard the hound ripping his brother's flesh, but then came the white and it swallowed all: her, him, the vicious beast. He heard it howl in pain and stop. Where Dean had writhed in agony and screamed there was nothing but the blood he had lost. Sam needed a body to cradle, to bury, to promise and deliver resurrection, but there was none.

There isn't peace in him ever since.

There is peace in facing death. In their life – it is actually something Sam could bargain with. He could try to bring Dean back, he could and would make another deal. If it has to run in the family – he'd let it run. He could seek revenge and he would have it found. With this – he doesn't know what to do. The demons at first tried to lash out at him every now and then, but when they realized both Sam and them had the same damn question to ask – they dropped it. They must've found their answer somewhere else, yet they were far from willing to share as they wouldn't talk to him since whether he killed them or not, and soon, he couldn't find one sulfur-reeking asshole even when he tried. Seems they have crawled below – terrified and confused as their late mistress.

The first years had been the most difficult to adjust, but at least it was reassuring back then, it gave the illusion of having time to find answers. In the first two years, he was receiving signs. Touchable, real, Dean's. They were rare, but Sam knew Dean was alive, somehow. And at first, Sam truly believed that the salvation he prayed for simply came, offered his brother time of healing and rest he really deserved. But soon, it all changed. At the same time, as they kept coming out of nowhere – they kept getting more and more eerie, less Dean's, and there was something growing at the back of Sam's mind, a feeling of silent, mournful conviction that perhaps it would've been better if Dean just died. With each letter Sam's panicked determination to find his brother and save him grew. And then they stopped coming.

That's when Sam's calmness died. Dread became his constant.

He told Dean once that people don't just disappear – it's just that other people stop looking for them, but Dean somehow had managed to disappear for the third time, because somewhere along the way, between the disturbing letters that were the only signs of him breathing, but less and less of him being, he disappeared for the second.

He's been following nonsense leads for years, and this time he's really clinging to desperation and a frenetic need for answers and justice, once more almost as blind as he was in the days where Lilith was his obsession.

Those were disturbingly good times. They were solvable equations and they made sense.

What happened to his brother still doesn't. It's so much easier to be scared when you know what you're afraid of. He often wonders if Lilith saw it. If she saw what she was afraid of.

II.

Sam doesn't take the road to Chicago very well. There are too many things that keep reminding him of the old days on this journey – a definitely far too long one to not think about the past and all that he had lost. It isn't new, of course, the bitter flow of nostalgia overtaking him, but it hurts him every single time anyway. It's a wound that keeps getting salted and burned, rinse and repeat – scraped down to the flesh again, never really having a chance to heal and become a scar he could get adjusted to. It's impossible not to think about Dean because Dean reflected everything in the world and now world is returning the favor. But long travels in the Impala are like the water torture – slowly making his misery delve into madness as the road before his eyes spreads and spreads into endless nothing while the images of the past and the now overlap, making the difference even more distinct and present until it haunts him and he has to stop.

And now, too, he has to stop.

He does. Sam puts his brother's baby to an abrupt halt on the too, too empty road and she wails as he hits the breaks, eyes almost blinded with tears. Maybe she's calling out, he thinks. He does too. And so does the echo as it carries the name through the sky, through the asphalt, through the fields. But even though he cries out "Dean," nothing calls back "Sam." Air vibrating in the hotness keeps mocking him and the orphaned baby. She purrs, calling and waiting as he gets out and leans against her door in an act of reassuring her or just himself maybe. Either way, it gives him something to hold on to as he stares into the horizon. Instead of withering away, the memories flow onto him thicker. Looking emptily ahead, wiping his tears of hopeless anger off, he sees years far into the past, he sees Dean.

Dean on a similar road, in similar circumstances on a hot summer day familiar to many hot summer days they shared. He recalls the sight of his brother tenderly taking care of his sweetest possession, as the Impala declared herself that she needs to pause in the middle of their journey. He sees it as clearly as if it were happening in front of his eyes just now. Dean talking to his baby soothingly, trying to see where it hurts, trying to fix what he can, sweat gleaming on his always tensed and troubled back, skin reflecting sunlight, unraveling beauty as Sam looked at him at work with childlike awe. It's a sight that calmed him down even when he was a kid – his brother's back meant safety and protection, it's smooth and fond language something incomparably different to the everywhere-present sharpness of their father's back showing when he was looming above the Impala's hood. Dad spoke with the car like he spoke to Dean – coldly, distantly – as if he was an object, something to make use of, nothing more. Dad was fear, instability, danger. Dean in everything meant the opposite. Dean's body talked to the car akin to how he treated Sam – with care, with brotherly warmth – as if it was a human, a younger little sister. Somehow, it used to bring calmness to Sam in his younger years, watching his brother work made a feeling of peacefulness silently seep into his bones. And Sam could swear as a kid and he still does, that Dean's shoulder blades and his arms when they shone in the sun, they were like otherworldly wings made of gems and ambers.

To him and to his memories, Dean's an exotic living and feeling treasure Sam could only try to fully understand, yet never managed to entirely grasp. Each time he believed he reached his core, he only found another locked up door, another sad mystery still impossible for Sam to unfold, to try to ease. But Dean, even through the locked away too safely citadel of his heart, would burn with love fierce enough he radiated a parent-like warmth despite being a maze, in all this almost motherly protectiveness of his, still being so different from what Sam ever saw or knew it was possible to become. Because regardless of that warmth, Dean had spread his arms open and let himself be cut, carved and sculpt into a nephrite soldier: rough, solid, obedient to the ruler. The green of Dean's irises sadly always reminded Sam of this since the earliest years, even more so when he saw how Dean looked at their father when he was still alive. And it made Sam cringe, because of all people, Dean should have known best the reverence was undeserved. Dean had the truth beaten into his bones, had it drunkenly shouted into his face, he should've heard in between the noises of silence back when Sam called and called, but John didn't care. Dean should've had eli, eli lama sabachtani thrumming through his skull, calling his eyes towards seeing and his ears towards hearing the sad truth, because Sam certainly had and he wasn't the one abandoned and dying. Dean stayed deaf to it. Perhaps because the nephrite soldiers can't hear. Yet another thing that made Dean impossible.

His brother was something even God would manage to design only once and made him as proof of working in mysterious ways. Dean was an unbreakable fortress of fragile crystals and ashes, a mother's heart violently shoved into the body of a boy – not much different than Sam's. Not by God, Sam supposes bitterly, but by dad. But Dean saw them all the same. Of course, Dean took on yet another role, because the ugly alcoholic God had declared so it should be: John burdened him with the one damn thing the man himself should bear when there was no one else to do that, Sam watched the parasite grow into his brother so much he became one with it: the mother, the father, the protector. A thing with a heart of a dove, but talons and instincts of a harpy eagle. And ever since Sam witnessed what paying the highest price meant, he truly understands that it has been a weight too heavy for his brother's amber inlaid wings to carry. So in the end, it broke his fragile avian humeri, radii and ulnae into shit, cutting shards and painful memory and he was never able to fly, not like he deserved to. Sam watched Dean very often and tried to decipher the mournful lines of his face and the silent lament of his irises, which Dean'd always claim they never sung, but they cried anyway. From what he gathers, he believes Dean still remembers having wings once, and Sam is sure he, in great secrecy, had collected the splinters of his hollow little bones and he carries them locked down in the Bastille of his heart, the part he never lets Sam into. Maybe because he's ashamed of wanting things.

But why he built himself fake wings and set out on an Icarus flight that ended with him falling into a hole even Hell won't speak of, Sam doesn't know to this very day. Dealing with this is impossible. It doesn't matter if it's been a year, three or six. When your life has been torn apart from you – it doesn't get better.

III.

On the winter hunt in Ypsilanti, Sam is already clutching at straws. Looking at Dean sleeping in something that was meant to be akin to serenity, makes fury gather around the darkest corners of his bones. Dean seems to be at peace with the fact that his nights and days are already numbered – each marked with every single morning of Sam waking up, just breathing. Sam can't stand that. Inhaling air hurts too much, knowing how it was paid for. But what hurts even more, is Dean so casually accepting of the fate his transaction inscribed on him. How could he be okay with that if Sam isn't?

Dean's steadily breathing form barely covered with a really exquisite example of a motel-ugly comforter wouldn't give Sam an explanation to the questions and accusations that kept thrumming inside of him, never spoken out freely or strongly enough despite the force he already put into them. He was so, so afraid of asking because he already knew he would be told something that would make him fall mute after hearing. He wouldn't know what to tell him, what to say to make him listen and believe. At this point, all the you can't, cause without you I'm further lost than dead, the you dragged me back into this life and fed and tamed me until you and it both grown on me again only to leave me alone, marked with the fact that it's my fault, the I almost forgot how it was to have you here, and when I'm finally old enough to understand you and treasure you being by my side, you put the gun to your own throat and tell me that "it's fine," staring at me with a pair of eyes that is trying to convince me you're already dead and the you want to become friends with the sort of a death I won't let you have even if God's life was on the line – all of it would only make Dean feel worse, already had him feel bad put in a lighter wording, so Sam tries to have his mouth as subtle as he could, but still often fails in his attempts at calmness, especially when all Dean keeps saying to him in exchange is apologizing for "the inconvenience."

It's the most painful thing for Sam to hear: his brother believing that his death is just that – an inconvenience.

You have a life to live, Dean! – he wants to shout.

But in the silence of Sam's words abruptly cut, in the infuriated cringe of his mouth and the desperation in his eyes, Dean will read that anyway. And his tender gaze and the tremble of his lips will answer to that: yeah. And it's you. Sam will turn his head away afterwards, he'll let guilt sink him quietly. He doesn't want Dean to see he's ashamed of being alive. That wouldn't make things any better or his brother any less scared. Dean already gave up the fight, and at that point Sam begins to realize that there was very little use in telling him to have it back. How could he if it seemed plain to Dean there wasn't a solution on sight, on time or even in this world, and admittedly, it had occurred also to Sam, even though he kept denying that to himself all he could because the incoming result was even more impossible to him than the facts. It was a thought he didn't want to let grow and develop into something bigger, into a solid conviction, but he's stuck with it like a paper cut in a vital place that doesn't heal, one which remains tender and throbbing at every contact.

Instead of saying anything, Sam chooses to do something. He can't bury the itch down knowing it's over, he decides to at least temporarily walk away from the still living evidence of it. These days, he has to start with leaving Dean's bedside as fast as he can because the painful sight of a lamb willingly going into slaughter keeps clouding his eyes and his thoughts. The air around their motel perhaps isn't the purest and sky isn't the bluest, but the outside nonetheless offered him clarity that couldn't be found in their room, which recently feels to him more and more like a tomb with Dean quiet, unmoving and asleep in it. Going out on that morning is a decision he doesn't regret even though it did steal from him one of the last priceless days he could have with his brother. But he was given a sign, an answer to the prayers he so fiercely kept crying out wordlessly to Jess ever since she died. He loves her still. And he believes in her loving him back, watching over him, because she knew. She knew without her he would crash and without Dean – he'd burn.

It's a peculiar thing to see around five in the morning, quite late in December, he supposes. The picnic table is taken by a woman taking slow, thoughtful drags from a cigarette that smell so much like shit Sam can feel the stench all over himself long before he approaches her. This he registered upon seeing only her back and her wavy, blonde, gradually burning into caramel hair. The sight isn't of course that odd, given that people on a morning cigarette are a common thing to see. But as he passes her while making his way towards the nearby vending machine, he caught out more interesting details, which over all, seeme to give quite an attention-worthy picture. Or at least something that could serve as a topic for a conversation meant to distract him from the constant morbidity of his thoughts. As stupid as it is – the mysterious morning woman and him – they have something in common. Her eyes are scanning the screen of an inconspicuous netbook with a level of focus rarely seen on the outskirts of nowhere, in a schrodinger's hour that exists and doesn't until you get to be awake through it on your own. Sam isn't even sure at first what has taken his attention more: the sharp curiosity painted in the way she stares at the screen and in the furrow of her brows, or the color of her eyes – a dirty, ashy mixture of grays and blues that made him think of dust and dusk-time waters at the same time. She makes a sight too vital for this hour, this place, and Sam would lie if he said he didn't spend way more time getting his bottle of water than he probably should, taking a moment stretched a bit too far to study the concentration on her face, her hand gracelessly tapping away the ash. She looks a few years older than him, but not too many, not more than five, if he had to guess. He guesses it wouldn't be that awkward if he approaches her. He doesn't mean to get any more intimate beyond a morning dose of small talk, but if by any chance something physical clicked between them, he won't mind either. Everything is good because in all honesty, nothing the world could give him, is good enough unless it would be god from the machine putting an end to Dean's misery before it could even begin. So he makes his first awkward steps towards his awkward solution, indicated through a vague but still understandable may I? gesture. She looks up at him briefly and nods as she takes her earphones off.

"You need one?" she asks right away, offering Sam one of her cigarettes, voice tired, a bit gruff, but carrying a hint of actual interest.

"I don't smoke," he answers, but half-consciously reaches out for the box anyway and takes his hand back when he fully realizes that. His palm falls flat on the table, fingers still curled as if they were searching for something regardless of what he just said.

Sam sits down.

"But you do need something," she says.

"I came for the water," Sam shrugs, opening the bottle and taking a sip just to prove his point.

"No, you didn't," the woman cuts him off. "You stormed out of your room, remembering not to slam the doors into high heavens in the last moment and you needed to regroup yourself before figuring out where you're going. If you hadn't noticed me, you still wouldn't have an idea where to go," she sighed.

"And here I was, thinking I'm the creepy stalker guy here," Sam lets out a chuckle, bewildered. And mildly ashamed of being so obvious in everything.

"If this is your line, it makes two, then. It's just us in an otherwise empty space, so it was pretty hard not to notice each other. I'm going to consider us excused. So?"

"So what?"

"What's your reason for being out in the open and this nervous so early?"

"I can ask you the same," Sam counters, half in a curiosity-based joke, half in deflection.

"And I'll tell you," she offers, chuckling quite bitterly. "But you go first, it's you who came here for small talk," the woman adds as she lights herself another cigarette. "Go ahead. Talk small, talk big, I'm ears to whatever relieves you," she laughs, the sound of it nice and unrestrained. "You might wanna have one anyway, if you wanna learn what I'm up to," she encourages. Sam frowns, still leaning towards no. "Could kill all sorts of bitter."

"Health, too."

"Soon, that's not gonna matter for any of us anymore," she smiles rather sadly and for a moment, Sam stiffens at those words. "Do you have a name they call you, boy?"

"Sam. I'm Sam," he exhales, wondering nervously where this is going, slightly anxious the woman's eyes could go black any second.

"So, Sam," she takes a languid drag and breathes out even more ostentatiously, "whatever lovers' tiff you got going on behind that door, you better go and make peace with her while there's time."

"It's not a lover thing… um," he stops in his explanation, realizing he still doesn't know how to address her at all.

"Nicole," she offers, "although mom and dad gave me Jessica as the second name, so go with whichever," she adds and Sam nods very slowly, very sadly, before speaking again. This time more confident about the point of saying anything at all.

"It's about my brother, Nicole," he goes on, but even that name hardly came through his throat, as if anything related to the still quite aching one is forever meant to stay hidden deep where it has been buried. But it's a sign, he thinks. Has to be. He decides to take that cigarette after all. He tried smoking two or three times at a dorm party when he had a bit too much to drink and started temporarily considering himself capable of developing smoking as a habit, but it always ended the same: coughing fits and resentment. This time is no different. Cold wind blows between them and it takes some of the stench away, but Sam knows he'll still smell it on himself for a few good days and Dean will bitch about it for the next twenty. Doesn't matter. "I'm losing him," he begins. "He's dying. I don't know what to tell him, what to do about it."

"Maybe there's nothing you can do about it."

"There should be." he clears his throat. "There should be," he repeats more firmly. "I should matter, make a difference if I'm already here. And he should fight this," he adds. "But I don't and he doesn't either. And we fight. We're gonna fight again. I don't know how to keep my mouth shut about it for so long. I can't be near him sometimes, even though I want and need to."

"Like right now," Nicole half-states.

"Like right now," Sam confirms.

"If you're, well, I'm not sure if lucky or unlucky enough, to have a long life, there's going to be lots of time for you to spend on not being near him."

"I'm aware of that," Sam says bitterly upon clearing his throat.

"So are you sure you can afford the luxury of wasting what you've got on fighting?" she sighs. "Terminal illness does give that half-cross, half-blessing of getting to cope with dying, of ending things right. It's not up to you to take your brother's peace away."

"He's not at peace," Sam huffs, offended at the statement itself. "He's just… done. These are two separate things. He mistakes one with the other, he doesn't really let me help, he won't let me in. And he's not even ill," he inhales roughly, keeping the air in until he can't anymore. "He's stupid. He chose to die. He made that choice for both of us."

The woman nods slowly. "Did he ever tell you?" she starts carefully. "Why is he doing this?"

"To save me. My life for his. Don't ask, won't answer," he states.

"Okay," she says unsurely, an unarticulated question still hovering over her statement.

"But I don't feel saved at all," Sam bursts out, getting higher on his hurt and anger. "I'd choose being dead over living without him, not knowing how to."

"Maybe that's why he's doing this, Sam?"

"What do you mean?" Sam frowns, aggravated.

"The way you said it, sounds kinda like an exchange. Maybe he chooses being dead over living without you? If his problem is the same, isn't his decision equally justified as your anger?"

"That's stupid," Sam snarls.

"Killing people isn't smart in general," Nicole rolls her eyes. "But the problem of yours, I'm gonna assume some fucked up honor-related blood-paying paramilitary shit, cause no offense, you don't exactly scream mobster business to me with your disheveled supremacist look…" she sighs and Sam nods courtly, showing her none's taken. "Sam, time gives both of you an advantage, even if this is something you can't solve. While you can, just ask him to prepare you. To teach you how to live without him. Give him a chance and he'll find his peace. There is nothing worse than dying afraid."

"I don't want him dying at all, don't you get it?"

"Let him," she says calmly. "If he loves you so much he'll die for you, do you think there's anything that can change his mind? Or do you know for sure how to spare him in a way that lets both of you live?"

"No," Sam swallows hard. "But I'm searching."

"Searching," she repeats so coldly it hurts Sam's ears. "But do you know how to save him? Are you sure you'll have a way found once the time is up? Do you know that you'll save him, Sam?"

"No," he admits quietly.

"Then don't condemn him at least," she concludes icily. "Don't make him suffer any more than he's going to."

"He's going to Hell. It's not just dying, you won't get it."

"So you do believe in Hell, Heaven, all that?"

"I do."

"Then listen to me, Sam," she sighs. "I don't think Hell is going to bother him, it's going to be too busy with coming down here. All of it. Unless something stops it. Then it's gonna be busy with stopping whatever is stopping it."

"Explain," he demands and his features hardened so quickly into a gaze terrifying enough that it made the woman flinch away in fear so great Sam just knew he needed no gun to make her feel as if she was on his mercy. She probably was. When it came to Dean, limits seemed to wither away easily as thin smoke.

"There is this man. He makes podcasts about faith," Nicole starts, swallowing unsurely before gathering the strength to maintain coherence. "He echoes with Angels. He hears them speak. He says his veins understand their language and that his blood washes clarity through him as it flows," she pauses, waiting for a reaction from Sam. He nodded in acknowledgement, but his expression doesn't soften. In fact, it only becomes more focused. "His words, not mine," she clears her throat. "But I believe him."

"Do you have a reason to?" Sam finally speaks, voice sharp and inquisitive, eyes fixed on her, determined to cut through her and see far, far beyond her words.

"Earlier this year, there was this hurricane. He knew about it coming, knew where it would hit exactly, knew how many casualties there'd be, he gave out a few names. Spoke about all of it in a podcast in early May. Actually, that's when his transmissions started. Soon they became exclusively religion focused. I thought it all was meant to be a really off, distasteful joke when I first came across it on a forum, back in May. Turned out to be true. So I stayed as close to the source as possible and I try to keep my eye on it ever since."

"When did that cataclysm happen?"

"You haven't heard?"

"I've been busy," Sam barks.

"August. It hasn't begun until mid-august. When folks have been talking about that on the news way, way later on, they said the whole thing started to form in May, too. I mean, it went to fuck itself like what, five days ago? Seven?" she wonders.

"Nicole, please," Sam says, this time he does sound softer, as if he really wanted to ease her and calm her down, as if she were a mildly terrified horse. "This is important, stay focused."

"Right," she chuckles nervously. "Anyway, it was a series of events when it came down to it. But the man, he only spoke of one. Said the Angels were talking about the cyclone season, but about that one hurricane, they talked, like, all the time. He said his blood told him that it marks the forthcoming of the beginning of the end and of war and of peace and that his blood overheard the secret that one man is meant to lead to all of it, and that the cyclone is like the heavenly horn or something."

"One in particular?" he inquires.

"Yeah," she sighs.

"Do you remember which one was it?"

"Of course I do," she huffs.

"What was it called," Sam insists and his voice breaks down in his throat once more. "You need to tell me."

"Dean," she says hollowly. "They called it Dean."

IV.

One thing was enough to put air back into Sam's collapsed lungs, force life into his blood when he was convinced there was none, transform apathy into power, make him grow wings of his own – spread them whole into dark, stern sharpness as if they were gothic arcs and towers. One thing – a piece of paper which landed among his mail out of nowhere on a warm April day. Stacked along with Easter-themed spam, untraceable, not even sent – it had no stamps, no nothing. Nothing, except for Dean's handwriting.

Sam remembers thinking about the all-surrounding aura of celebrating resurrection and in a mad, twisted, but subtle, only under skin existing way, giving into it, thoughts seeping with hosannas, eyes filling with tears in the otherwise dry and empty stillness of motel room. For the first time, he found life. Dean is alive. This is what Sam remembers thinking years later, crying again, because he's been so, so wrong.

Sam,

I'm fine. As fine as I can get, considering. I got snatched outta this crap, but the healing part is a bitch. Can't get outta bed yet. Legs won't let me. Guy that saved me, he won't talk much. He tested himself – holy water, silver, iron, salt – he was good with everything. He knew I'd need to have it checked. Wouldn't tell me how. It's all sketchy as shit, but I don't think he's gonna go all ballad of Chasey Lain or Torrance over me, so I can wait this through until I can walk. Then I'll take care of it, him. He can't be human. Unless he bitch-trapped a reaper – he can't be. There's no such healing powers. Sam, I think I was dead. I'm not. Wait for me. Stay good, kid.

And so Sam stood up, awaken from the dead like Lazarus, because Dean's message was like the voice of the messiah, beckoning him to live. Sam prayed his thanks to the endless sky, not knowing what kind of a god or angel it should go to, but it didn't matter. Bobby was so damn relieved to see him so alive again. Sam had to live. Because he was waiting. He started to spend his days hunting once more because Dean asked him to stay good. He even kept her – the car. The one that reminded him of too much and he wanted to burn her, to stop haunting him. But he kept her as a light that would guide his brother home somehow. Sam stayed good. Things didn't.

Sammy,

You two would get along. He knows about so much nerd stuff, he'd get your panties all wet. He's good company. I sleep through most of the time, though. It sucks to be so weak, now I know how lame it is to be you. I can walk around a bit when he helps me. I'm better. But he said I still gotta stay low because of Lilith. Says we're warded here. Says he'll take care of it once I'm good enough to handle crap on my own cause now he's got to focus on healing me. Said he would've done it faster but he can't be detected by shitlords of shit sorts.

Okay, you're not lame or weak. You're just twelve, that's all. Stay far, far ,far away from Lilith and other bitches. Wait for us. And happy holidays. Although I've been informed that Jesus wasn't born late December, but September or October at most. And you'd probably agree with that. Anyway, it's like the whole Christ thing is a lie now.

But whoever he is, he knew he left Lilith for more than a certain death. Sam merely quickened what already was done. Demons ran the hell away, literally, and Dean and he already had the Christmas talk and no, Sam certainly was not twelve. And supposedly inhuman healing taking so long? That's bullshit alright. Sam began to feel like the whole waiting thing is like sitting on a god damned time bomb. But still, he couldn't trace the sender, he couldn't get anything. Bobby started worrying, too. More about Sam's constant aggravation, because it was more palpable. And Sam was furious, because it was impossible to know where he was when the letter came in, but it did. He woke up, having the note next to him in an abandoned shed in some nowhere in Ohio, having taken a nap after digging and burning a corpse of an asshole that kept pestering whoever the fuck tried to move onto his farm. It was like having a Harry Potter moment. Only a real Harry Potter moment couldn't possibly mean good news. Witchcraft is for knives, not Barnes & Noble shelves.

When Sam came back from his hunt, Bobby reassured him he'd contact a friend of his when a next, fresh letter pops up.

They had to wait really, really long for the next one to come. And when it did, thirsted after and craved for as if it was manna from heaven, Bobby didn't even hesitate for a second with calling. He didn't even say a thing. In fact, he couldn't. To whom? Sam stormed out cold and furious, leaving nothing more but roar of pain and impala's engine behind him. In the three following days that it took for Pamela Barnes to show up, many, many monsters had died from Sam's unrelenting, justice-seeking hand and even more had met their fate after the fiasco. It wasn't manna. It were thorns, spikes and scorpions covered in milks and honeys, Sam knew. Sam read through it.

V.

The road on that one hunt wasn't particularly easy for Sam. First of all, because Indiana may or may not – as Bobby pointed out on more than one occasion – have become an object of Sam's fixation, despite actually not being an object. But he can't and won't argue with that, he's at least that decent. Maybe that's even what the Trickster tried to warn him about becoming exactly, but it doesn't matter. The lesson passed unlearned and Sam doesn't care he failed that particular test. Here he is, obsession-driven: the formerly inconspicuous state of Indiana really became a solid concept in his mind, a very precise curse. And he's been going through stages of being drawn to it and strongly pulled away from. Because that's where a hellhound tore his brother into pieces then something else took him away to damage even more. Of course, Indiana doesn't consist only of New Heaven, but the memory blurs the picture anyway and he doesn't think he's got it in him to be worried by his lack of rational judgment on the subject. Why would there be if there isn't anyone left to judge him? Still, any time a case pops up in the state (which already happened twice and gave him nothing), Sam can't afford to waste a chance, because maybe this time: hint, truth, answer, revenge. Anything would do. He's been running around in circles empty handed for too long. For years that were too long and too dry.

He doesn't like the case and the damned place way before he gets there. He despises it on a very personal level from the start, because he's quite positive it's going to become a yet another haunting reminder of his. Normally, it wouldn't bring back bitter memories and Sam would remain perfectly focused on the job, but with Dean gone, everything just echoes with him. Every single object that could give birth to a painful association, emits ripple waves full of Dean from its core and Sam's mind, tuned into it all too well, recalls every note of whatever mournful song the trigger sings. And checking up on an abandoned hospital, quietly but insistently hums of their old case in Illinois – good days, easy days. But the most coherent part of the melody is the one reminding him of how he was angry about his situation back then, how Ellicott had taken that silent anguish on surface and made it into rage, made him almost end his brother right there, right then – that sad, oblivious, clingy thing who pouted, who chirped, who quoted the Shining in ways that couldn't hurt Sam (yet) and laughed too brightly into the face of danger and the night.

And it has Sam thinking bitterly, but openly (who is there to scold him, now?), that things could have gone so, so easier if they hadn't found John at all. Or if they found him dead, instead. He'd help Dean cope, they would settle down. Sam would re-tame Dean, teach him how to live off the road, ease the wild fear out of his hands, remind his brother of the wings that had been for far too long neglected. They could have lives, and Dean, too, could learn what it is to fall and stay in love with somebody, whoever he wants. They could have families. Make a big lovely one. One that doesn't give out guns and orders. One that gives a fuck in the right ways.

But they found their father. And alongside with him, found things that were bigger than they could possibly swallow. Sam regrets it, hardly gives a shit about the moral implications of it, given what they went through, after all. To think he was so furious about Dean not letting him find dad fast enough. He just wanted to reach John and get this shit over with, quit "the life" and actually have one. But it wouldn't happen as fast as Sam would like because of Dean's incompetence, neediness and lack of his own will, its place taken by urge to fulfill their father's distracting orders. Ellicott, no Ellicott – those accusations didn't come out of nowhere. This is what Sam saw and remembered, what infuriated him about Dean the most – lack of freedom, growing into slavery so deep that despite the bright façade of charming smile and bravado, it bordered on lack of life. Sam thinks now that the universe really has got an ugly sense of retribution, because now, now he actually knows what the diseases that supposedly already were eating Dean's marrow out really are. He knows, but he dreads witnessing it nonetheless. Fear doesn't stop him, though. Nothing does anymore.

This town looks like his conscience, he thinks bitterly as he drives through the streets of the place reality had very little mercy for. Buildings once beautiful or homely, wail to his eyes abandoned and deteriorating, rotten beyond repair. Peoples' homes, places of cult, all of this bared to his eyes, wailing through holes, through shards of broken window glass, a silently unraveling picture of misery that is bold and shameless with expressing its hurt. It's a wound. He's not even surprised anymore the hospital is said to be haunted. There are literally plagued spots in the town that look like there's something off about them. He breathes in air through the slightly rolled down windows – because both him and the car observe their surroundings anxious, wary. Spring breeze reeks of demise and despair, taints the innocence of oxygen, disturbs the day that seems to be so fresh and vigorous with its sky flawlessly clear and land richly touched with kisses of green. He doesn't think the niceness of it is real. It's all wrong and the streets are empty, sunbathed but calm, too calm. The thing about this place is that it was an industrial little beast, born out of and fed through steel – the nature and the quietness of it are a sign of invasion, of illness. It's dead. Whoever still lives here – is the thing haunting it, Sam supposes as he leaves the impala idly. She waits.

He passes ruins and chamomiles as he walks.

The building is covered in writing he doesn't recognize. He wonders: is it graffiti made on drugs? Rage of the people manifesting so eerily? But soon he realizes it's not the case. The markings are also on the ground and the further Sam delves into the yard, he's less and less convinced that they were drawn with paint. He takes out his EMF meter, but it feeds him with nothing. He takes out Ruby's knife as well, because if there's something wrong to kill, he might have a better chance with that. He becomes hyperaware of the guns resting sleepily against his skin. He enters, the door makes no struggle, only moans tiredly when he pushes it open. The hall is lit through the dirty windows, through the broken ones. Discolored floors and walls are ornamented with similar writing that covers real, older graffiti. There are stairs that go up, but the path down is blocked, he notices right away. Cemented, he guesses. He wonders why, but immediately he offers his attention to something else, something obviously requiring more instant evaluation: sounds of footsteps coming slowly from upstairs. Sam quits the knife in favor of a gun. The steps come to a halt.

"What are you doing here?" he hears a clearly irritated demand, Sam even dares to think he's encountered the very sound of a frown, wrapped into an unmistakably male voice.

"I came to ask questions here," Sam groans.

"Are you a hunter?" the voice insists, ignoring what it was just told. "If you're a hunter, we may talk. If not, leave."

"Come down here, then. Lucky day for you. But if you won't come down right away, I will shoot you," Sam warns.

"I suppose you will," comes the calm reply and steps follow.

What comes down the stairs looks very human and very undisturbed with the sight of a 6'4 man pointing a gun at it angrily. Which kind of makes the whole figure a wee bit less human-like in appearance, Sam concludes. "Hello," he hears and huffs in exchange, eyes the fearless oddity before him. Looks inconspicuous with a disheveled Colombo kind of a look and a curious, benign gaze, but Sam's grip on his gun doesn't lighten. He's seen monsters friendlier and more innocent than that. It also makes Sam wonder why exactly did the man come down here with a dirty coat sloppily put over a rumpled shirt, which is sticking out of his dress pants, tucked in as messily as it gets and it makes Sam cringe just looking at it, at that tie put on the wrong way, not even really fixed on the collar of the not entirely buttoned shirt. Hurry, his minds tells him. He was getting dressed in a rush. Why?

"Why are you here?" Sam asks, accenting the question with venom, because it's his and his only to ask. "What do you know about hunters?"

"Same as you," the man replies, slowly nodding, not even trying to give a hint whether he addresses one of those demands or both. "It's my area."

"Area? As in, you're the peacekeeper here or something?"

"Yes. This is a decrepit soil, this place. Evil and pain seem to be quite fond of it, but people flee. Someone needs to protect those who are still here."

"You must be doing a poor job, then," Sam says icily. "If I hadn't heard about lights flickering or burning impossibly bright, weather messing itself the hell up and people screaming at night in this particular joint – I wouldn't have come here," he explains. "So you know what, buddy? I don't believe you," he hisses.

"You think I'm behind those occurrences," the Colombo guy ponders, sounding so unworried with the implied accusation Sam wants to punch him right now, because he damn should be. "Considering that I'm the only person here, I understand," he sighs. "Come, see me with your irons and silvers and whichever else you see fit," he offers and shrugs off his coat, rolls up a sleeve of his shirt, extends his bare skin in encouragement.

"One sketchy move and I shoot first instead," Sam groans as he warily paces towards the man, his spare hand shamelessly reaching for a silver knife. "Just one."

"Shooting me won't be necessary."

"Christo," Sam articulates coldly, ignoring that comment for the time being. The man doesn't even flinch. Sam makes the final steps, grabs the offered wrist and cuts through skin. Colombo frowns only slightly and bleeds red, human blood. Smiles at Sam patronizingly politely. He's close enough to punch him now, but chooses to get answers instead of a fleeting moment of relief. "You wanna tell me what the hell happened here last week?"

"I've had difficulties with keeping the inhabitants in row," he tells Sam calmly while he takes his tie off and begins to wrap it quite carelessly around the shallow wound. "But I've researched some additional means of taking precautions and dealing with existing issues and I've managed. It's all calm now. Exactly as it should be. Your presence isn't necessary."

"Inhabitants?"

"Yes. Angry souls, a demon, annoying explorers of ruins," he says, smiling softly.

"Spirits I get, but demon? Why would a demon be here? Was it looking for something in particular?"

"Why do demons do anything?" he shrugs. "I have my priorities set on survival and efficient demon destruction, not on prying for demon-related answers. Unlike you, I'm not a Winchester."

"How do you know me?"

"Everyone's heard of you," he says matter-of-factly. "What I already know allows me to state that I'm having pleasure with Sam, aren't I?"

"That doesn't explain how you knew I was a Winchester," Sam barks, ignoring the question. Doesn't want to mention Dean.

"The car does. I've heard plenty about it, I'd recognize it anywhere," the stranger doesn't say a word about Dean, either. Sam is mildly curious whether it's just courtesy coming from him having heard the gossip about his brother or just honest lack of further thought on the subject. At least he doesn't ask the what happeneds and other things Sam can't answer even if he tried.

"Fair enough," Sam decides and clears his throat. "Sam it is," he says and extends a hand in an awkward peace offering. But the guy instead of just shaking it, closes his own palm around it and Sam figures that now it really got awkward.

"Hello, Sam," he says, smiling. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Good things too, I hope," Sam smiles back unsurely.

"Only," comes the confirmation.

"And you are…?" Sam inquires.

"It's not of import," he says sharply and Sam knits his brows in suspicion. Seeing that, the man sighs with noticeable exasperation. "I can't tell you my real name, I've got a significant person I need to protect and giving out my identity would put my loved one into great risk. I hope you understand, Sam," he explains. "If it comforts you in any way, I very often on the better days am referred to as Colombo. Or Constantine. Well, among other things."

"Must be the coat," Sam suggests bewildered. "But I think I'll pass on calling you that," he says and adds an out loud in his thoughts. There are certainly more important things he needs to discuss with, well, whoever he is. "So, the demon. What have you done with it? Can I speak with it?"

"I'm afraid that's impossible. I've immobilized it, trapped it, then cut it into pieces and cemented," he explains, pointing at the freshly removed entrance to the stair-case. "That was an additional measure."

"How the hell did you immobilize a demon?" Sam raises an eyebrow, curious. Mostly disbelieving, however.

"The research I have mentioned before. I've learned about very old means of protection," the man answers and pauses, clearly mulling over something. "I think I can show them to you as well, you need all the protection you can get."

"Why?" Sam asks sharply.

"Because you live to take down something that is above you," he says coldly and adds, a bit warmer, "after all, you're a hunter. One of those who don't hunt goats."

"What?" Sam squints at that, taken aback.

"Oh, yes. That probably would have been funnier in a different language," he exhales heavily with disappointment. "Doesn't matter. Come, let me show you the sigil-spells," he insists, leading Sam closer to the writings covering the walls.

"Yeah. Let's do that instead," Sam agrees, uncomfortable with the situation. "Are those also responsible for the weather anomalies, light of inexplicable intensity and reported screaming?" he wonders, pointing at the illegible signs.

"First two, yes," Colombo says, directing his hand towards a particular set of squiggles. "This happens when you use it against Lucifer or a servant of his. It could temporarily send him away or stun a demonic force," he explains. "It would be wisest to use blood to make it work with maximum strength."

"Lucifer?" Sam prods.

"We can't know for sure when he will come, it's best to be prepared at all times."

"I've heard that once, years ago and he hasn't arrived since," Sam points out bitterly. The man tenses at those words.

"I too, pray that he won't get to arrive," he says harshly.

"To whom?"

"To myself, at this point," comes a stern answer.

"So the huge God help us sign isn't a part of a spell or even yours to begin with?"

"Oh, it's mine alright," the man chuckles bitterly. "But I've had second thoughts on the matter," he says, turning around and tapping with his hand below the text, where Sam sees that another message has been written – smaller, black ink instead of the raging redness. What God – it simply says.

"What made you change your mind?"

"Time and experience," he replies dryly. "I also realized there are people holier than a god and certainly much more worth saving than a god is worth waiting for or finding."

"I know what you mean, I think," Sam agrees. This time Colombo's lips curl upwards only in the tiniest bit, but it's the first smile about which Sam can say for sure that it managed to reach the man's eyes beyond the surface. He nods.

"You are one of those people worth saving, Sam," he says warmly, quietly, both voice and face radiating with honesty so suddenly intimate, it makes Sam's mind stutter for a moment. It sounds like a blessing. He decides to accept it humbly. He's never been blessed before. Not by anyone besides Dean, that is.

"Thank you," he says, because that is all he currently knows how to say.

"You can thank me by remaining safe," he says and reaches out to his slacks pocket, from where he retrieves a white piece of cloth.

He puts it on the floor and crouches down in front of it. Sam, still bemused, watches him remove the tie off his cut, dig his finger into the wound and prod until blood covers his hand thickly.

"What are you doing?" he asks perturbed. "Isn't the cut going to fester like this?"

"I'm deciding to help you. And the cut isn't going to do anything I won't let it do," he says firmly. After making his statement clear, he begins to mutter something in a language Sam never ever heard before. He's not even sure whether it's an actual language or just glossolalia. Simultaneously, using his bloodied finger, the man draws similar glyphs on the piece of material. When the man gets up, he offers Sam the mysterious cloth.

"Have it with you, within reach, at all times, once it dries up. Stay away from the morning star. If you see it, press your palm to the sigil," he informs, sounding dreadfully serious and walks towards Sam so close, he touches his chest with the tips of his fingers.

Sam can literally feel discomfort pinching him from the inside at the subtle contact. He clears his throat as a reminder of his apparent lack of comfort. "Could you-?" he starts as politely as he can.

"I'm sorry," Colombo says ashamed, taking a few steps back so fast as if he got burned. "I've been told on more than one occasion that I'm, well, a sick fuck-up with no respect for boundaries and have basic personal space issues. The last part apparently has got some truth to it," he sighs.

"What about the first part?" Sam asks.

"That would be just a matter of a very harsh tongue and a tendency to make poor choice of words. Something one can get used to," he tells Sam flatly.

"Don't mean to butt in, but is the prize worth the insults?"

"Yes. But it's not open for discussion."

Sam supposes he touched an area he shouldn't have fucked with. He doesn't even want to learn why, he just knows. He opts to drop it before the tension gets too thick to learn anything of actual value.

"So… to come back to why I actually came here," he says, hoping to clear the atmosphere a bit. "Those things, they cover the main problem and phenomena. But the screaming?" he ponders out loud. "You never said where that came from," Sam adds, just to remind the guy what he's talking about, because Colombo seems to be slowly rolling down elsewhere in the peculiar world of his thoughts. The man's face gets cut through with a bitter grimace for a second. It takes him a moment to answer the question.

"And wouldn't you scream, torn into pieces and locked down?"

VI.

I Chasey Lained. We were taking a walk. In a garden, I think. I don't know. Everything's like a fucking garden there. I was weak, so weak. Still am. All play and no work makes Jack a dull boy, no? And it made me so damn happy just to walk, I was so pleased I could die. But then I was pleased even more. He saw me being so happy, he said I have dove eyes. He called me tower of David right into my neck and I ain't sure what it meant but I shuddered like a girl. He's got me so open and biblically laid bare. Get it? Laid. All of the shit fell off the altar and I saw the holy figures stare, but somehow I wasn't ashamed. He's gotten me carved into things I didn't know they existed inside of me before. I didn't know I existed before. But it's all been inside of me to take. A truth of being Belladonna, turns out. He says I shouldn't ask you to wait, my friend. So, dunno what you're waiting for, but don't wait. When he says things, they are. When he says things won't be, they aren't. I wish you well, but what you want to have, you won't get. If he knows, he knows.

I'm sad you never told me your name. Fuck, that's probably because you never write back.

I keep telling him "I have a friend, I have a friend" but he only nods at me like I'm five, says it's nice and that's it. Maybe he'd believe me more if I had a name to give. Write back just once? I know I miss you.

Dean &

The rest of the paper is conveniently torn away. Or burned away. Like Pamela's eyes when she tried to force answers out during the séance. Before that happened, Sam was given many answers. Most of them, as Pamela had reported, were "no." Like:

"What have you done with Dean?"

No.

"Let me talk to him!"

No.

"You killed him!"

No.

And it was a no that broke three glasses into shards.

"Why did you tear out your name? Say it, we command you. Manifest yourself!"

No.

They'd repeat ad nauseam weren't it for the fact that, whatever herbs and crap Pamela placed into a bowl and put on fire, murmuring what they supposed was a legit summoning spell, had infuriated the thing so damn much it lashed out at the psychic.

"He said he manifested," she croaked before passing out, still clutching her injured face.

There were only two replies that were different from all the no, but Sam is pretty sure they were meant to convey the same message:

"Where is he?! Where are you hiding him?!"

He sleeps. And I won't stir nor awaken love until it pleases.

"Let me see him, I'm his brother!"

I'm his breath, his blood. You want to save your brother, I am his salvation. Your love makes Hell doors open, Sam. Stop.

Sam was telling himself all he could that oh, he was barely getting started. But his road was an endless nowhere. Years passed, he still rotted in despair and anger that howled inside of him, made his hands go stiff and aching from being so idle, still lacking answers regarding Dean. He couldn't get him back, neither could he get back Pamela's eyes. But he was too numb to feel remorse about the latter. He often wonders if Dean would hate him for that. But Dean is a Chasey Lain Belladonna these days, and he doesn't even know Sam's name – he reminds himself. He's hardly in the position to judge.

VII.

He looks at the screen with a poorly edited drawing of a strawberry on it. His mind is even more of a mess than earlier this morning when he stormed out the motel. Nicole stares at him expectantly, waiting for him to start asking questions. Sam's got them, of course. His thoughts are orbiting without composure around the cataclysm with his brother's name, from where they keep sharpening into ideas of angels, an unknown Savior, who the not much less mysterious man (who also, as Sam noticed, has a tendency to spend lots of his time talking about and praising his "baby-girl", her fierce faith and even the damn strawberry she probably ms painted herself), described as being the one who is akin to soft dew fallen onto stream-adjacent grass which rests hidden amongst pine woods; the one who beckons through the echo of his skin. Sam has no fucking idea what that means. Neither does the guy responsible for all of the angel-eavesdrop "Providence" podcasts, because when asked about some of his listeners, he only said that he doesn't know. That's what the angel that listens had told him when he asked about the Savior himself. Nicole offers she'll keep tabs on the future broadcast and gives him her e-mail in case he wanted to know something more.

But what the man had warned about never came – something worse had come in its stead and the case was forgotten. The only change that occurred was that Sam decided to give Dean his Christmas. And he did. Dean's eyes shone so brightly on that evening it almost made Sam go blind, and he wished to hold this moment still, but each time "Last Christmas" played on the radio, it worked as a gruesome reminder of the inevitable future crawling up his heart. Last Christmas it turned out to be, indeed. They had stayed in that motel and celebrated their time until the New Year came. Ypsilanti never saw fireworks as beautiful as the few cheap ones they together have released into the endless night. Dean never looked more sad or as beautiful as well. Sam started praying for the unnamed savior before he would fall asleep. Later, he would curse himself for it, because something horrible came and claimed to save.

VIII.

Then on one ride it dawns on him: he got it all the wrong way around. It's raining cats and dogs and Sam is weeping, because he remembers Dean was the essence of rain. Without him, the air won't smell the same, the Impala isn't herself without droplets of water on his wrists, without them waking up the heavy smell of his leather jacket. Dean made the air complete on a rainy day. Sitting in his car, soaked and searching for something that was missing, he understands what is gone: the lulling with safety note that, to his mind and memory, only Dean's skin put into moisture. He was the dew; he was the life and freshness of a rained on pine. The Change never came because the Savior was stolen and dried.

IX.

Sam walks out of the ruins confused as a bitter fuck and thinking about the sigils he knew he'll spend days researching, and the Impala waits among the common flowers patiently, expectantly maybe. Her engine wouldn't start three times as he tries to drive away. Stubbornly, she's waiting for something else. And she roars when Sam finally manages to get her heart up. She wails. And Sam has no idea why.

There comes a time when a single picture passed to him in a pastoral bedroom in Chicago makes him see everything and understand her crying. Too late – his heart tells him – too late. Because Dean Winchester was saved. And savored afterwards.

animals

I will send swords to kill, dogs to drag away, and birds andanimals to devour and destroy.

(Jeremiah 15:3)

"The dog ran away, I guess," Castiel hears Dean announce one time, not long after he woke up. His gaze is still dimmed with sleep, but the morose notes of his voice are not something to be belittled. He said it as if it was something he pursued but gave up on. Castiel doesn't know what to make of it, he only wishes he did.

"We didn't have a dog," he says carefully, putting the tray he came with on the bed-stand, ignoring the prepared meal for the moment, deciding to crouch by Dean's side instead. His fingers find his neck without any conscious thought and start stroking it idly. They vibrate in the groan that already is building up inside of Dean's throat for a moment before he speaks with matching disappointment.

"Course we do, Cas. There's two dogs," he says it, almost an accusation that Castiel dared not to remember something so fundamental. "The purple dog and the dog that ate me," he explains.

"Dean," Castiel says sharply, deciding to interfere, not certain if it would be safe to let this situation happen to the fullest, whatever it might not be. It's always a danger in not knowing an outcome. So Castiel will have to grasp the outcome in his hand, squish and kill it, if he must. "There are no purple dogs."

Dean slow-blinks at him, offended. "What do you mean," he says harshly, "there are no purple dogs."

"There were no purple dogs conjured neither in creation nor by human breeders," he says calmly. "I'm sorry, Dean."

"This is bullshit," Dean snaps. "The dog that ate me was in fact conjured, and yet, the purple dog is meant to be off the table?" he huffs. "I know this dog!" he goes, voice shaking with a furious need to defend his sanity. "I know this dog, okay? It's our dog, Cas!" he insists. "It's my dog," he murmurs to himself. Castiel throbs whole in woeful compassion at how broken Dean sounds in his smallest self-assuring whisper.

"Maybe it's your memory mixing associations, Dean," he tells him softly. "But it's fine. Whatever the dog truly is, you'll get your thoughts there one day. Then we can look for it together."

Dean sighs. "Promise?"

"Yes, Dean."

"I miss the dog," he admits quietly, his soul weeping with honest longing.

"You want me to stay with you?" Castiel offers, hopeless to the conundrum of the dog.

"Yeah," Dean says, moving on the mattress, making space. "Lie down with me. It's been so empty here. Me asleep, you gone," he pats the bed.

Castiel does as suggested, places himself by Dean's side, carefully, gently, shields him with an embrace and Dean leans into the softness and warmth of his body like a cat hungry of sunrays' attention.

"There," Dean announces, voice much more content at last. "You're home," he says. "And I'm too."

Awed, Castiel can't help himself lightly rolling them slightly around, limbs only further entangled, until he rests above Dean like a shield, a roof – he thinks, and he kisses him, touch tender and calm.

But then Dean opens his mouth and sweeps the tip of his tongue against Castiel's lips and the soft-breezed unhurried wave of his caress rapidly turns into maelstrom which he can't control once unraveled.

"Cas," Dean manages to breathe out somewhere amidst the feast that he himself has become, the tiny moat of his darkened eyes beg him and Castiel, rampant with the urge to eat Dean wholly, performs a small miracle on his will, he halts his hunger to listen, "can you make me a purple dog?"

"I'll do what I can," he murmurs, sealing his promise with a bite on Dean's lip.

The way Dean clutches the nape of his neck at that, the way he breathes into his mouth, the moisture of his needy air sweet to him akin to holy water, it makes the rest of his grace set itself ablaze. Soon, they both burn: until they're stupid, until they're blind, until they're animals.

moriah

We have the burning coals and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

(Genesis 22:7)

"Dad was God, once, you know," Dean muses. "All the stuff your dad God does, he did it and had it. I get where you're coming from, I do."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. All the orders always to be fulfilled, all the worship… Don't question shit, do the shit. And I'd always done whatever shit. And burned my own meat on the sacrifice stake. And he would yes or no'd the effort. Faith is not like family. Maybe family is not like family. Family is military. You get what I mean, right?"

"Of course."

"But I think, sometimes, I was the Cain. Like, he never yes'd my tribute."

"You'd never kill your b- " Castiel starts and scolds himself, curses under his breath.

"That's pretty much exactly what made the worship stop, okay?" he sighs. "God came up to Abraham and told him go and kill your son, Isaac. And you know what happened next, don't you?"

"God stopped Abraham because he was testing his faith."

"Yeah, shit. What kind of an explanation is that. Even Dad stopped being God the moment he told me to raise the knife on my child. I'd never," he cringes, disgusted. "I'd never," he repeats firmly.

"You don't have a child," Castiel counters.

"Stop fucking telling me I don't have things, Cas," he hisses. "He's my son. I raised him. I fed him, I clothed him, I lulled him into sleep and here on my womb he slept."

"You don't have a womb."

"Caaas," Dean growls in a warning, anger getting closer and closer to its peak, his tongue already becoming a blade that hangs a Damocles's sword above Cas's head.

"Dean, you don't," he says flatly, unafraid of Dean's rage.

Dean turns around in the sheets violently and presents Castiel the cold and unwelcoming wall of his back. "Fine!" he hisses. "I don't have a womb, so you don't get to fuck me," he says with stubborn finality. "And I raised him," he adds and only then he considers himself done.

Castiel sighs. Now the pain is necessary. Castiel will never let any mentions of biblical child slaughter pass in a smallest word. He wanted to spare Dean the pain, but now he'll have to remind him of it.

"Who?" he asks, sadness cutting him asunder as he makes the question fall.

Dean's back tenses immediately. "Oh my God," he says terrified. "I don't know," he gasps. "I don't know, Cas. I don't know."

He shakes and sobs in Castiel's secure grip and Castiel hushes him and croons soft whispers until he falls asleep.

Gospel of Claire

Never let your mouth cause you to sin and don't proclaim in the presence of the angel, "My promise was a mistake," for why should God be angry at your excuse and destroy what you've undertaken?

(Ecclesiastes 5:6)

I.

She used to believe in God, in Angels, in things. Dad taught her. She believed he'd never let her go, wouldn't leave her drifting scorched among bitter nothings. Taught her that, too. Taught her that when a woman and a man get married they become one in the eyes of God. Some of his lessons were true, some were not. All she had learned the hard way. None of this is wisdom, she believes now. None of it made her any smarter, any better, any happier. All she is – is alone. And the still too warm breeze ruffling the dying curtains of her rented windows does nothing to soothe the grim frown on her face.

The man, as he opens the door just a bit, looks at her apologetically probably even without knowing. In his face she reads a child so very lost in the confines of the age and responsibilities he neither does feel right with nor is ready for. But since the first moment she had raised her eyes onto him, this isn't what holds her interest. The fact that her guest, despite his words, is not a federal agent, she just learned the hard way too. He reeks of Angels and celestial palms – he is gripped tight and written all over. And yet, he walks in so lightly, so freely. He probably doesn't know. He's probably here to ask. She hasn't decided if she's here to give him answers, though. She'll listen and she'll see. She doesn't care if she's by any way destined to share her knowledge or not. The only thing she's sure of is that destiny tends to take things and people away from her, so he doesn't like it for shit.

"Miss Novak?" he asks her kindly. She must have frowned even deeper just a moment ago.

"Yes, come in, come in. Sorry for the mess, I didn't expect any visitors all that much," she says. "Not that fast, anyway."

"I apologize for showing up without much of notice, but, like I said over the phone, the Bureau decided the matter was, um," he clears his throat now and she assumes that this is most likely going to be the most honest thing he'll say, "urgent," he adds, looking around anxiously as if he didn't even know what to do with himself physically. He probably doesn't.

Understanding that, she smiles softly and nods.

"You can take the clothes off the chair and put them on the bed if you wanna sit. You probably wanna sit."

"Thank you," he sighs, does as he was told and sits down heavily. "I understand talking about this might not be easy for you, so I, um, appreciate that you agreed," he looks at her expectantly, but she doesn't take the chair vis a vis his own. She only straightens down her cardigan and turns around, leaving for the kitchen segment.

"That's okay, it's probably not easy for you, either," she tells him as she pours water into glasses. She sits when the glasses are already waiting on the little round table. "You're not a fed," she proclaims with a casual lack of interest. It's just an observation. "You're something else," and this would be the foreplay to an inquiry.

The man tenses, instinctively reaches toward the back of his pants. Maybe there's a knife down there, maybe a gun. Whatever it is, he doesn't take it out – he's calculating, waiting for the situation to unravel into something clearer. Just like she is, truth be told.

"What am I, then?" he asks curtly.

"I don't know. Else. Personal. Came here for the Angels. But not for the stuff that's related to whatever the FBI thinks about my dad talking to them officially was. You really came for the Angels."

He clears his throat again. Swallows thickly.

"Who told you that?"

"Give me the courtesy of your real name, at least," she scoffs.

"Who told you that," he repeats, unyielding.

"You were the one looking for me in the first place. For a very precise reason. You don't pretend to be a federal agent and interrogate a regular eighteen year old girl for cookies," she huffs. "Wouldn't you think whatever you're after runs in the family? Well, in what's left of the family."

"And what's left of it?" the man prods.

"Just me."

"That's not much."

"That's got to be enough in this economy."

"We seem to have something in common, then," he says.

"More than you know. I'm only curious where did it all start. But I bet you've got more points on your guilt account than my family had."

"And why would that be," he snarls.

"Story for a story, buddy. You know some of mine already, so it's only fair if you share," she counters. "You think that if I wear a cardigan and moccasins and live in a hole then I'm book smart, but life stupid?" she accuses. "So come on, knock me out with yours. I got time. Do you, mister urgent?"

"My brother would have liked you, Claire," he shares, apparently fascinated by her incredible personality. Which is very flattering, but in terms of actually anything of value, spectacularly useless. "I'm Sam," he adds, finally. Because this is data she can work with.

"Well, Sam," she raises her eyebrows and tone, just a little bit. She already knows she doesn't look half as intimidating as she would have wanted to, but that's what she's got with her goddamn baby face. "I'm cordially uninterested in that kind of information. I don't care what gets your brother off. All I wanna know is: what brings you here?" she asks, accents the you part in case he hadn't noticed.

"My brother. I think he's the one your father was talking about in the podcasts."

Claire is very inclined to think that he, in fact, hadn't noticed still. Brother, brother, brother – this family's got issues. Actually, this family's got bigger issues. And on those she should focus most likely.

"As in the savior?" she makes sure.

"Yeah," he swallows thickly again, thorns or words or incoming tears stuck in his throat, "the savior."

In exchange, Claire inhales very roughly, gathers all the air in her lungs, and holds it – as if she was a dragon just waiting to scorch him. She wishes she was one. Sadly, she's anything but. She's just this timid little cuckoo with the face of a kitten, a hay-colored ponytail and blue, wise eyes – the only family heritage other than being angel catnip, and that too gets her in trouble more often than not. Turns out big blue eyes and blond hair wrapped into a petite form is consument-favorite good. Thinking about it makes her mind go sour.

"In this case tell your savior brother to save it and give me my father back, cause I kind of needed him. Like, a year ago, two years ago, six, now," she groans finally, her voice a livid cold fury. Because if her father was there, none of her current life would have happened. Hell, maybe she'd still be even in church and shit or two. What an amazing thing to not consider for the moment.

"I don't know what things you've been told," Sam interrupts Claire's internal processing and resentments parade, "but Dean didn't quite have an inherent power to bring people back from the dead. Not without making a pact and I doubt it he'd get another one," Sam replies and watches her frown curl into shock and despair all out of the sudden. "Sorry for having to tell you this, but it's true."

She bends in half and hides her face in her hands. Shit, shit, fucker, shit.

"What did you say his name was?" she whispers weakly. Shit.

"Dean," he answers her, looking and sounding dumbfounded with Claire's reaction to that particular detail.

"Jesus," she says, voice even weaker. "I think I'm gonna throw up."

"What's going on, Claire," he insists harshly. And this is not a good time. Like among the handful and a some of bad years, this is not a good time extra. "Claire?" he tries again, softer and calmer, the ever-persistent telemarketer he is, while she, on the other end of the line, fails to regard him at first due very busy with muttering holy fucking hell under her breath.

"My father isn't dead," she decides to clarify first after she's done being elsewhere through the courtesy of her overburdened memory. "That was just what the police came up with because the whole house burned down with my parents in it. Dad wasn't there. I'm only alive cause earlier that day I was told by an angel to leave home because demons allegedly were meant to come after us."

"That's making you throw up? You don't make any sense. And what does that have to do with Dean exactly?"

"God, stop repeating that name!" she cries out this time. "Take me to him instead. I wanna see him," she exhales roughly. "Actually, I really as in personally very much don't, but I need to. Guy's my only clue," she corrects herself just so they'd all know they ain't friends here.

"I'm here cause I'm looking for him! He is the one that's gone!" Sam lashes out.

"Newsflash! So is my father!" Claire shouts.

"So what, you're trying to tell me they took off on some kind of rendezvous together and rode into the night?" Sam huffs mockingly.

"Oh, god, screw you!" she's full on crying this time, too furious to scold herself for the sign of weakness. "You wanna talk ass points? You're gonna get them," Claire snarls through her tears. "Something took my dad away from me. And rode into your brother. So lay off the fuck jokes, they make me sick for good reasons."

Sam inhales nervously. "What makes you say that?" he asks, voice shaking with blatant fear.

"Shit," Claire whispers. "I was right. I knew I wasn't making things up," she adds, rapidly reaches for her glass and gulps in everything. "My four dollar dinner is so going to waste, the throw up is going to be a thing."

The man only gives her a bewildered look. "More's gonna go to waste if you don't elaborate, Claire. For this one you're gonna get director's cut off my story, I promise."

To that, she raises her hand, suggesting she needs a second. Truth be said, she needs more than a second, but she supposes that's the only thing in her current options. She breathes in, breathes out, wants more water, but it'll have to wait a second, that one. Bad boy cop-agent looks like he's gonna piss his wasp-infested panties if she won't say anything soon. So she gets over herself and she goes on, like the brave, smart girl she is.

"I was twelve and little and sweet," she begins. "Parents never indulged much into to the whole frick-frack mechanic talks with me, didn't have to. Was a good kid, religious like them, pristine clean off dirty thoughts, right?" she chuckles, sounding like brass pots falling on the floor. She quits her poor imitation of a laughter. "And they were this beautiful thing together, like the Bradys, but better. At that time, things between mom and dad started to go bad, like she was crying often and accusing him of this crazy shit, and he would stare at her wide eyed and pale in shock, cause he had no idea what she was talking about," Claire sighs. "About some of it. He had perfect clarity onto why she used to tell him he's going crazy and that he needs treatment. She didn't believe him. I believed him," she shrugs. "That's why sometimes I assisted him in Providence. Father – daughter bonding time and all. Liked that. Loved that, actually. But the whole angel situation messed with their husband – wife deal. It reached the point dad would sometimes sleep on a cot in the recording room. Mom was convinced dad was having an affair," Claire says, gets up to gets herself another glass of water, finally. "Wish I had real vodka for this one," she murmurs to herself.

"Why?"

"Cause zinfandel wouldn't cover this bedtime story," she replies flatly. "Why the fuck do you think people want vodka for."

"No," he sighs tiredly, "I mean, why was she convinced about the affair? Did your father have one?"

"Um, no?" Claire huffs irritated.

"No offense."

"Some taken."

Sam snorts. She does too, although the anger in her laughter is unmistakably acidic. "Thing is, Sam, now that I'm older and have some pieces together, I get it where she had the idea from. Now you come here, pissing yourself in fear when I mention you know which aspect of the problem and my mad theory stops being a theory."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean your brother. And sex with otherworldly shit. And oh, just look at you right damn now – the panic I'm talking about, if only you could see what the word does to you, look all like a stray bitch beaten up too many times and fed far too little," she says, sounding calm and sad. Knowing. "See, every now and then mom would cry and cry and talk that dad was calling a foreign name in his sleep, said he'd writhe around the bed and moan. And Sam, the sheets always went to the laundry in the morning. Dad had no recollection of it," she exhales heavily. "No wonder, not his fault. Probably not the damned ass-halo's, either. Dad's vessel game was too strong and both the human and inhuman went to shit itself in a grand malfunction of things. I don't care, also grand," she huffs with blatant disregard in her voice. It makes her sound like a bratty stubborn kid, but she doesn't care about that, either. "Whatever it was, it resulted with Dean becoming an additional, theoretical party in the bedroom."

"Fuck," Sam stutters.

"Excellent observation. Very much to the point, but not helpful. Now you fill me in. Be helpful. Your face has I know stuff you don't know written all over it. Among other things, but we'll trade that, too. So," she wants to play nonchalant now, "did your Deano bend and ask for Jimmy in his sleep?" still she cringes in disgust at her own words. Maybe she's not that brave.

"Practical," Sam coughs. "I believe it's practical right now. Years ago, he would write sometimes, out of nowhere. Last letter he wrote me, he wasn't himself anymore. He was a doll. But whatever was left of him made it clear, that… that they…" Sam tries to say, but words fail him. Like he doesn't know how to name what transpired.

"Fucked," Claire aids him bitterly. "They fucked," she repeats flatly. "All the tragedy and sacrifices not because of saving the world, but for angel fucking. No wonder the world doesn't look saved to me. Does your savior brother have the ability to bear nephilim children at least?" she spits through gritted teeth.

"Angel?"

"Yeah, that would be the fun part. The angel said it needs dad as a vessel to aid the savior so he would not be cast into perdition, so the final war would not start and humanity would continue to live. Maybe that was even the plan for real. Until it wasn't. Say, when did that letter come?"

"Four years ago," Sam offers and Claire nods with a bitter mockery of respect.

"Were there any letters prior to that one?"

"There were. For two years. No mentions of sex."

"Well. Turns out Feathers really did have good intentions. But when a grace molds too profoundly with the human aspects of the host, there can be shit-leaks. And we, what can I say, we're unlucky to be not only durable, but very powerful vessels. Dad resonated with Angels. And they, when in contact, resonate with being human. Angels are a force, movement, energy. Clicks so well with sex drive when channeled somewhere," she mocks sweetly.

"How do you know so much about angels?"

"And how do you know so much about demons, Sam? We're practically family. Well, close neighbors. Shit, bad, but close. And we get to hear crap from behind their walls. Angel stuff and me, demon stuff and you. Demon blood, angel blood," she shrugs, "hunters, shit like that."

"Wait, you became a hunter? I haven't heard anything about any kind of angel guy's daughter joining the forces."

"Well, a waitress to fuck on the road isn't exactly something so uncommon it's worth gossiping around. And whoa, wipe that judgmental look off your pretty face. Not twelve anymore. The only thing I can't do legally for more or less three years is to drink. Rest is on the menu and mister Law gives it a okay."

"Jesus Christ, but why would you do that in a planned manner? Some of these guys I know, they aren't safe. Hell, they aren't even clean."

"Yeah, hunting monsters is safer. I'm not interested in all that crap you're after, okay? Not that selfless. If I'm gonna die stupid, I'm quite determined to get killed by the Angel I want to hunt down, not some tilapia."

"You probably meant a tulpa," Sam smiles softly. "But I'm seeing it works for you, considering the books and the stuff you already told me."

"That and raiding the specialist library helps. I'm trying to get into this theology school here in Chicago. I just really wanna find my father. 'S all I want."

Sam swallows hard.

"I've been there, you know," he says. "But this vengeance, it ends bad. Don't wanna be a hypocrite, but if you're still willing to make a different choice here, don't make the wrong one."

"I fuck crazy alcoholics for lore and books or information they think they don't need, do I look like I'm on the choice making point? I think I've crossed that fucking crossroad like thrice. At least some of you losers give nice tips."

Sam huffs.

"Dean would have tipped you half of his credit card, you'd intimidate the shit out of him, but he'd really like you," he comments.

"Why, he a little whore, too?" Claire sneers. "Likes to be tipped or fucked well in the sunset? Then I'm sure he's having lots and lots of fucking fun right now."

"Don't talk about yourself or him like that," Sam demands and his jaw clenches at that.

"Were you like together or something? You can't shut up about him. Was he your little whore?"

"No," Sam stutters, "we're not together. And I thought you weren't twelve. Maybe you aren't good yet to come with me," he dares her, offended.

"Hey, I'm good enough to pay my bills and good enough to be a frigging orphan that has to take care of herself, but I don't have to, I really don't have to be good about the one piece of ass my whole little world went down the crapper for," she grunts. Sighs with exasperation. "I mean, whatever, as long as my dad gets to go, I don't care about fucking incest. Just take him and go."

"Claire, we really don't."

"Okay, okay," she laughs. "Then do shut up about him. Just show me the fucker's selfie and I'll let you see a photo of my dad. It might help to know what we're looking for."

"We?" Sam inquires.

Claire is mostly busy rustling through her deteriorating drawers, and she's not gracing him with a look as she answers. "Oh, no, Scooby Doo, you're not dropping me on this one, it's exactly personal for the both of us, so fuck you and no pep talks."

Sam shows her a picture of Dean from his cell phone. Dean is wearing an angry, exhausted frown and he's trying to cover the camera with his hand. That, and a leather jacket that does him injustice of being at least three sizes too big. The quality of the picture is crap, but even from there, the depth of his eyes' color startles her. She looks at him and she sees pretty. Not handsome, pretty. She's certain he never gets treated as seriously as he should be. She knows how it's like with her fierce heart and a not matching face of a motherfucking doe. "Huh," she comments. "Bitches probably wanna pet the guy and the guys probably wanna bitch him."

Sam frowns sourly.

"The way I've heard it, now he's got both."

"Wow ain't that the fucking el dorado. You sure you wanna save him from that?"

"He's my brother."

"Hey, no, he's his own person."

"I thought you wanted to save your dad."

"I do," she confirms. "Cause he's his own person," she says with finality.

"Aren't you afraid he won't decide to stay with you, but with Dean?"

"'M not. Dad was never into dicks. He had this whole very religious no man parts around my man parts policy going. Was very fond of my mom, on the other hand. When she was alive, that is. You, though, you seem to be very afraid he won't come with you, your brother," she tells him with firm conviction. "Was he into dicks?"

"Not that I know of."

"And yet he went for one."

"That's bull."

"You're afraid he's staying with the Angel."

"The Angel isn't staying," Sam declares coldly.

"I know," she says. "I'll see to that."

"So you're sure you're coming with me?" he asks and she nods. "You keep looking for that picture, and I'm gonna have to make a phone call. Phone calls, actually."

"Where to? Bitchville?" she smiles innocently.

"Fuck you, Claire," Sam says as he walks out of her flat, but before he turns completely away, she can see him hiding a small smile, too.

II.

Sam looks even more tired when he comes back in. Claire's already got her picture and something that looks like a very poor imitation of a margarita.

"We may or may not be having yet another unwanted passenger on the ride," he declares.

"Alright. So where are we going?"

"Don't know that yet, but a friend of mine is now trying to track your father. Or any signs of something that might look like him. So um, I'd need that picture now. I'll have that faxed to the man."

"Where did the Angel touch you?" Claire asks, carrying a drink towards Sam. "I mean, where were you when that happened? Where were you when some crazy thing happened to your body and you couldn't tell why?"

"You're suggesting I came across it already?"

"You came across something and it will be easier if we track it down this way maybe. A claim was laid on you, but I can't read it right. Sit your ass down and take that shirt off, I need to read it. Should be able to. I'm shut off from direct angel lines, but maybe I can get something out of you."

"What are you gonna do?"

"Touch you frigging inappropriately, princess. Might hurt, so have a drink."

"Thought you said you don't have vodka."

"Wouldn't call that a vodka."

Sam takes a sip of the mixture while unbuttoning his shirt and frowns. "Yeah, wouldn't call that a vodka, either." Claire says nothing, presses her palm to his chest and closes her eyes. After a moment, Sam hisses in pain. She's not that surprised. "The hell is that?"

"You've got warnings carved into your ribs. I'm trying to read them. Shut up for a sec cause my body's gotten kinda rusty on its Enochian."

"Enochian?"

"Enochian," she confirms and pinches him in the nipple. He shrieks betrayed and offended.

"And what was that for?"

"That was Enochian for shut up, Sam, I'm trying to focus."

He remains silent after. It takes time. Claire believes she's learned plenty. She believes that, again, she's learned too much.

"Shit doesn't make sense," she concludes. "There's two separate claims laid on you, one's even older than you. Older than this gay Earth. And the other is filled to the brim with protective shit and blessings and it's meant to make you invisible for the other Angels, especially the one who booked you first. But why would it want to protect you? If you've met it, why didn't it destroy you?"

"Can you tell when did that happen? I don't even know when I've met it."

"Not precisely. But it happened after, you know. This much I can tell for sure. I've learned their names, too. Sam?" she begins cautiously. "Do you meow or something when you get holy water over your ass?" briefly, she considers splashing some over him.

"No, why?" he asks confused.

"Why the fuck did Lucifer call dibs on you?" she prods, and knows that it's pointless. He doesn't know, either. Confirming her brilliant assumption, he shrugs.

"Didn't figure the demon blood would make me that special. If I was meant to be his favorite, why did he fancy getting me stabbed to death by one of the lesser kids?"

"Makes as little sense as the other thing, Castiel, deciding to pet your little head 'stead of wiping you off this ass Earth."

"Castiel?"

"Yeah, that's what your titties say: lay your hand on this cookie and feel my wrathiness come upon you," she chants, wanting to mimic a priest or something. She's not sure but at least that's entertainment. Sam doesn't laugh, though. Won't stop Claire from trying. "If found injured, inform Castiel. Speak, Earth and reveal, if found coming towards Dean, immediately inform Castiel."

"You're quoting?" he asks, his face a deeply displeased frown.

"Paraphrasing," guy's got no sense of humor. "Be healthy, Sam, be holy, Sam, be away and also fuck you, Dean-dong's mine," Claire sneers. "The last one, before you ask, that was my interpretation. Didn't say that exactly, but some precautions smell like the middle finger to me."

"Precautions like what?"

"Dunno that yet, guess we'll have to find out. Morning star can wait, come on, let's do this. I'm so pumped I wanna punch a bitch," she demands, the not vodka starting her inner gears like she expected and hoped it would. "Got any access to unusual ingredients?" she remembers to check, wanting to be a professional, cause, hello, she can and probably is going to die here, so she wants to get shit done before that happens.

"Morning star? Did you say morning star? You mean Lucifer?"

"No, the other morning star, fucking Martha Stewart." To be honest, she's not even sure if the woman ever did morning TV. But it's the idea that matters, she hopes.

"Gimme that picture, Claire. Now. I might have a hunch. And I hate it."

She gives him the family photo wordlessly.

"Fuck," he only says, goes pale. "Fuck."

One louder fuck later, Claire no longer owns a little round table. She is a not that proud beholder of a pile of leftovers that mingle quite nicely with the remains of her glasses. So her father was already found once, only to get lost again. She wants to break something, too, but she doesn't trust the power of her knuckles as far as she can, or rather can't throw a decent punch. And in this rate, she's going to run out of functional furniture before they even leave this hobo hole.

"When," she only manages to whisper.

"Three months," he tells her with effort, mouth of his suddenly too dry to talk sentences, to speak at all. He looks and is drained and she doesn't blame him, at least this one time.

They run out of the flat, she doesn't bother locking. In the car, on the radio, the speaker informs with unprofessional dread marring his voice, that the whole population of a town has been slaughtered during Halloween. Neither of them seems to care. They just go, as fast as the car lets them, faster than it should be able to take them. Claire even thinks maybe it wants to be there as much as they do. They were so fucking close all this time, she's so angry she wants to take the wheel over and hit thirty stray anythings. Doesn't even wanna try to think what the guy has to be thinking. But his face tells her that those are things she's got no fucking clue how to dream of.

Thing is, they're not ready to go there.

"We're gonna need a few things."

"There's a whole arsenal in the trunk and I carry a demon-killing knife," he tells her, sounding cold and detached, eyes focused beyond the road. Already there, on his brother, she guesses.

"And it isn't going to do shit," she retorts, equally determined. "Different stuff, spells stuff. You need to weaken the thing."

"How do you kill it?" Down to business, huh – she thinks. You wish, Sam.

"You probably don't," she elects to inform him.

"You're saying this because it's about your father."

"Saying it, cause as far as I know at the moment, there's no way to kill an angel. Banish it, trap it? Sure. Make it kick the bucket? Fuck off."

"You swear a lot," he observes.

"Yet I care so little," Claire sighs dramatically. Not swearing would maybe take her to a nice job and some even nicer suburbs, but it sure won't take her where she needs to get. You go soft on hunters, you end poorly, that's how it just rolls. That's how it rolled in the kiddie-ward and then in the orphanage. Being weak just screws you sideways.

"You trying to compensate something, Claire?"

But Sam probably doesn't know that or failed to learn his lesson, if his family's history, or, what she's heard of it at least, is any indicator of a more or less similar set of childhood experiences. Probably Dean learned that one better, being the poor, pretty fuck and all that.

"Yes. Fucking daddy issues. Sound anywhere near familiar to you?" she politely suggests.

They don't say a thing for a while. They both know she wasn't lying and neither of them considers the awareness something to be proud of. Sam takes a turn on a different road, one that certainly doesn't lead to their final frontier.

"We need to see a man in South Dakota," he says after something that smelled like a half an hour of awful silence. And Claire thinks these words were an olive branch for a war that hadn't occurred yet. "For those things of yours, whatever they are," he offers.

"Golgota can wait," she accepts nonetheless.

"Okay, Sanhedrin," Sam nods.

III.

The salvage is really, literally, a salvage. There is, of course, a house standing in the middle of it, looking mournful and forlorn like some shit maybe Poe would want to write. Sam leads her through a dusty path among this whole elephant cemetery for cars and she sees the king of this mountain awaiting them on the porch. He's heard of him, but what she's got to hear is mostly nothing – brief mentions, benign little curses or thanks muttered between beers. And now she gets to see the guy in the flesh – a bearded guy with a trucker's cap. When she gets close enough she adds another thing that seems crucial to her – bearded old guy with very fucking sad eyes. Bobby Singer makes the impression of a man who regrets waking up at all every single day, but more than that he's afraid not to – without his hand this sorry world could go even more sorry. Judging from the subtle reek of whiskey, she supposes that it's probably small comfort for him that he makes the planet less bad. The look he gives her after noticing her own alcohol breath when she gives him a polite hello tells her that they're probably not going to be drinking buddies.

He hugs her companion warmly, but Sam seems to be too antsy to wholeheartedly reciprocate. Bobby probably notices given he's not stupid, but he deliberately doesn't comment on it. There are tears in his sad eyes. She stares right back in them as the man looks at her warily. In a gruff voice he tells them there's dinner inside. Good, she's been fucking hungry. She doesn't say that, though. She doubts she's going to speak much, anyway. There's something in this old drunk that automatically makes her give him the credit of respect, and she decides not to swear in his presence. Besides, it's his kingdom here. He makes the rules. If little girls aren't allowed to drink, maybe they're not meant to curse around here, either. Even though, as it turns out, he does swear like all the glorious old drunks do. Or even better. But Sam, the giant scary thing he is, watches his tongue around the old grump, too. Maybe it's not a little girl thing only. Or maybe Sam is a little girl as well. Turns out also dinner is canned chili con carne heated in an old pot. This is something she knows and understands. Tastes like warm ass, but it's good enough.

Sam doesn't want to eat – he wants things now. It takes Bobby good fifteen minutes to convince the princess to sit down and eat some. The only working argument being the fact that there is no way to get holy oil anywhere near now, so he's got to wait either way. Meanwhile, Singer contacts some little bird old crows of his to get shit done.

It takes three solid days and a something. The passing of time and actions give birth to a single bottle of the oil (a week ago, she wasn't even sure it's real. Turns out there are miracles in the times of misery). It's got to be enough, cause it's their only shot. During these three days, Claire realizes the salvage could use a dog. It's too dead and empty without one, without anything – and she can't stop wondering how the old man gets on like that, on his own – alone among dead things and memories of dead people. Somehow, to Sam, this place, this sad rusty thing, seems to scream home in ways other places on Earth can't and probably never will. It doesn't take her much time to realize why. It's the one damn spot where he's still loved like a child, no matter how old he is. In time, even the canned goods, which are actually canned bads, get more homely. During those meals, when the two of the men briefly speak of Dean, it dawns on her, that Dean too is loved here like nowhere else. She can't help staring at Bobby just then. She shouldn't care, but it gives her some unasked for peace knowing that someone at least loves the poor stolen sap in all the right fatherly ways. It makes her think of her dad and it stings anew. She's afraid of what she's going to see. She's angry with herself that she enjoyed the prelude to this mess while it lasted. She remembers her father told her he's about to let an Angel in. Asked her if she's okay with it.

She consented. Cause she was twelve and stupid, and had no idea what was coming; had no idea what kind of power lies behind a single syllable of agreeing. She supposes her father had no idea, either. What even are angels to men? – she thinks. Isn't that like a macro scale pedophile asking a twelve year old out and offering goodies? How could something so short-lived and limited and fragile comprehend the consequences of swallowing a burning planet, if even the Angel itself could not? Bitterly, she thinks the whole terrifying end of the world is less of a mess than whatever this is.

When they leave for the hospital, as prepared as they can only be, eerily ready, or silently maybe even hoping to die, there are no tears in Bobby's eyes. There's just plain grief at that point. At that moment, both of them are too selfish and lost in the fervor of incoming hunt to care. They're far past that. They're not people anymore. They are their purposes, nothing more. Everything is in calm order this way. They need to shut their hearts down cause they just know they're not going there to get their families back, they're on the way merely to retrieve their bodies who walk and talk, people who used to make them be, long, long gone. They don't know how to kill the loved ones they need to put to rest, they won't know how to let them live. They're shells, the truth burned out of them. Instead of real beating hearts, an unknown sea will be howling in their chests. This is a language neither she, nor Sam knows how to speak. They're not going to save anyone, Claire thinks. She's not saying that to Sam. The anger that brings lines to his face tells her that this is something he's using all of his force to reject despite literally everything suggesting otherwise.

IV.

Sam did mention a guest they did not want or need, but truth be said, he doesn't know shit yet. What Claire knows is that they are in major fucking trouble. Trouble of which she's not supposed to tell. Begging to drop the thing off on the nearest gas station won't help. It's going to return to them one way or another. And it's gonna be pissed.

Nicole, of course, smiles like she's the most innocent piece of pussy, and even though her eyelash batting ritual doesn't seem to do much to the ever Dean and retribution focused Sam, he still trusts her enough to let her come, apparently. But Claire knows what she is, sees through the soft flesh and smells the truth through the thick layer of Lanvin perfume which slowly boils on her skin, akin to Claire's fucking temper, while they're at it.

"You must be Claire, the dear daughter of the Providence host?" she chirps excitedly. "Oh, I really want us to be friends, sweetie. No frowns, no troubles," comes a soft and thickly veiled threat accompanied by a wink. And yeah, maybe the church always yapped that Satan could be alluring, but now that she gets to listen to him speak, he sounds like melted butter. Cause it's Lucifer. While she tries to figure out how to tell Sam without screaming, morning star offers her a suggestion. "We have a common goal, after all."

"What would that be?" she asks coyly and the man stares at her, confused with the very point of the question.

"Freedom," Lucifer supplies. "For Dean, for your dad. The world, even. The way I see it, the savior needs to go back on the road for the show to go on. And personally, I feel very tempted to meet the guy."

"Is this why you wanna come with us, little Nicky?"

Satan smiles even wider, apparently amused with the fact of Claire playing along. Nods at her purse and throws away her empty pepsi can into the trash. They shouldn't have come for her, waste another day for meeting a false bitch prophet in a place hundreds of miles past their fucking goal point. They should leave her here, at this crap convenience store in the middle of nowhere, which as far as Claire can tell, is still around the outskirts of Detroit. Now that would be convenient. That would be the only reasonable thing to do despite still being stupid. Maybe it would give them some five minutes extra, after all. But no, that's probably not happening. We went to Sioux Falls for answers, we might as well go to Detroit, he said. Well, Sam, fuck you. Turns out they should very much not, because the answer is only going to fuck up the equation even further. And they have wasted how many hours extra? On the devil to add to that? Four and a can of pepsi?

"Sam told me over the phone that you have a problem and I might have a solution for it," she offers and Claire is tempted to punch both of them.

"Really, Sam? What's our problem?"

"We don't know how to kill an Angel, Claire," he huffs and gifts her a truly enviable bitch-face.

"And I happen to know how to do that. In fact, I'm gonna do it for you. All you have to do is let me."

"What's your price and your secret?" Sam asks, skeptical. He most likely doesn't want to take her along too, but Claire knows it's for different reasons. Reasons that are not enough.

"The only thing that can kill an Angel, is another Angel," comes the shocker. Claire huffs. "And before this young lady here outs me in a quite not orderly fashion," Lucifer insists and adds, "and says and twists things that don't need to be said," Claire rolls her eyes at that, because really. "I'm not exactly the woman you've met in Ypsilanti. But I'm the one you spoke to recently, and I am the one who lead you to miss Novak. I'm an Angel. I want to help you, Sam. This is some personal beef I've got with the kid and one of my other brothers."

Sam swallows hard.

"Are you possessing that woman?" he asks icily.

"No," Satan ensures. "We need consent to let us in. We're not demons. Nicole wanted to help too, Sam," Lucifer insists, raising the urgency of her voice to add to the drama.

"I don't trust you," he states firmly and Claire thinks that, okay, that's a good start.

"It's not like you have options," and okay, that would be a shitty end to the debate. "Definitely not regarding Michael. He's our older brother. He's the very reason why Castiel keeps Dean low key. Michael, you see, wants his hands on Dean the most. Maybe not as biblically, but for very precise biblical reasons. And if you think what you're trying to kill is scary, good old Michael is something Castiel is afraid of."

"So why should we believe you can take this Michael out if he's beyond everybody's pay grade?" Sam insists.

"She can, this one," Claire admits through gritted teeth. "Above Castiel's pay grade, too. I can feel it from here. It's just that it doesn't mean we should let her. The stronger the punk is, the more fucked we are."

"See, I knew you were a smart girl," Lucifer compliments. "Too much into conspiracy theories and paranoias, but very, very smart. But that's okay, I understand your worry."

"Drop the butter, okay?" she scolds, irritated. "Actually, you know what? Don't talk to me at all. Talk to Sam. Just tell him the fucking truth, he's gonna find out one way or the other."

Now Claire is quite sure throwing mild insults at Satan's face is an idea of poor wisdom, but she just can't stop the venom from flowing. She's only partially terrified of what the fuck she's fucking doing – she doesn't quite believe she would get her ass smitten like that. A light show like this could end the sympathy for the devil and cut the great wooing of Sam down to zero. "So what's it gonna be, Nicky? You wanna talk precise things at last or do you wanna let me tell my buddy here what they called you in prison?"

"Fine. Sam, I think you should sit down for this."

"I think we should get into the car and you, dear, are going to fill me in while I drive cause I don't think we've got time for this."

Claire groans.

"Are you implying everything's already decided? You really wanna take it with?"

"Yes, Claire. It is. I'm just politely reminding you, that I took you with me. I decide here, you don't," Sam reprimands harshly.

They walk back to the car, all of them. Nicole eyes the devil trap hanging above the mirror with fond curiosity. The doors shut with finality and Claire mutters a general fuck you as it happens. Sam starts the engine.

"I'm Lucifer," is the bold bomb – she's got to give Satan that, she really doesn't fool around anymore. This also happens to be the point where Sam should shut the engine, but he does not, the blind idiot fucker. He elects to drive. Doesn't say anything, so Lucifer takes it as her cue. "But you don't have to be afraid, Sam. The bad PR is just a part of the world not understanding me."

"Yeah, everyone says that. Probably even Dahmer said that at some point."

"But you really should know something about that, too, Sam," she pauses. "Or am I wrong and you do think that you're an evil man for wanting to live and that your father was right all along because all you ever wanted is the family's misery, not their liberation?"

Sam hmphs, which is a good sign, but then he hmms, which is the opposite. "I've been in the same place. This world, it too, doesn't have too many stories. Families are very repeatable."

"Why did you mark me?" he decides to ask first.

"Because it was always written that through you, I could get to my dearest brother."

"Which one would that be?"

"Michael. I want to make things right. Listen, I'm not going to lie to you, I don't know what it will take to achieve that or if it's possible at all. Bad things can happen, but they would have either way. One thing I know for sure is that I'm the only one who can absolve your brother and give him rest. Castiel," she muses, "he wants well, but his means are never going to be the right ones. If I confront Michael, I can offer Dean no more darkness and no more pain – something Michael will bring onto him if there's no one to stop him."

"And why would you want to stop him?"

"And wouldn't you stop your brother from becoming a thoughtless tool of someone else's will? Didn't you cry when your father tore his heart and tore and tore until there was nothing in his mind but blood?"

"Can you promise to leave us alone and intact after all of this?"

Lucifer considers this for a moment.

"I promise."

"I don't believe you fully and I suppose I have some means to fuck you up at least to some extent."

"That's true," Satan nods wistfully. "But I know you're going to make the right choice. The one you would always end up with." She stares at the man sagely, knowingly. "For now, do you agree to let us work our problems together?"

"Yes," Sam cuts it in exasperation.

"As a witness, I would like to interject that this isn't valid form of consent," Claire argues from the backseat.

"If I meant to take him as a vessel, he wouldn't be the one driving anymore."

This isn't what Claire expected. Another miracle – they made it to Gary alive, even though the car wilted on them inexplicably around five miles away from the abandoned joint in which all wicked sleeps. This, she considers a part of Castiel's doings and Lucifer confirms. They walk the rest of the road and once they're in, there happens a thing she did not expect either, but Sam must have expected even less. After they make a circle out of holy oil in the hall, after Sam calls the angel wearing her father's face (but it looks, walks and sounds nothing like him), after it walks into the ring lured by the call of Lucifer's either threat or just presence, after Dean's brother, festering with vengeance, lights the oil trail on fire, and it's so confused and trapped and small and lost and pitiful she's almost sorry for the trapped holy bird – Dean walks in. On his own two legs. And plays the host.

"Hiya, Sammy," he greets casually and throws his leather jacket off himself, places it onto the ring to take some of the fire out, lets the Angel escape its confinement as if nothing was fucking wrong about it. "See you met Cas?" he chats up. "Cas, you good? Didn't get your tail caught in the fire I hope?"

The thing whom he called so fondly only nods, expressing his okayment, too busy with staring at her, Visibly Hurt Princess Samantha, and Satan. They could make a girl band alright and they certainly are a sight to see. But before anyone says anything about anyone or anything, Sam throws in his two dollars fifty, all richly soaked in one thousand offended islands sauce.

"I thought you've had dementia," he croaks. "Thought you didn't remember me," Sam manages to say, shocked.

"Past tense alright. I remember now. Everything. You, Mom, Dad, Lilith, my car," he counts out and the searching fear painted subtly below his crow feet seems to ask the unspoken so where is my car? In its stead, he decides to clarify something more urgent. "I'm bright like a new tanning bed lamp. For some time now. Best I've been in, I don't know," he shrugs casually, "ever."

"And you didn't come back home?"

"I am home," Dean rolls his eyes, his tone strongly suggesting Sam's shooting questions straight from the idiot bowl. "While we're at it, let's take this talk a bit more inside."

"Dean, come on, let's get out of here, now,"

"No," Dean huffs and knits his brows at that idea like it's preposterous. "You don't wanna have a civil conversation, Sam, you get out of here."

She didn't expect that. Sam didn't, Satan – judging from her dumbfounded face – did not, either.

stauros

He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.

(Matthew 27: 42)

I.

She looks just like all the holy ones in pietas Dean has seen in textbook photos of sculptures throughout at least nine schools he's been to. She is sorrowful, silent and beautiful. But furthermore – she's strong. So damn strong he admires and envies her maybe, because he is the weak one, the wilting insect she cradles and soothes as she cries and sings and pets his dry, hollow hands. Wipes blood off his palms and kisses them. And she is lilies and light and she is so young, everything about her electric in ways Dean is too human and maybe too dead to comprehend.

"Soon, baby," she comforts in a voice that is one of the very few things Dean never, ever forgot. "Soon." But he only turns his head away for a moment before he manages to look at her again. "I am so sorry," she says, voice breaking into dust and Dean wants to mutter out that no, whatever she's sorry for – she shouldn't be, but his throat confined through the pain of just seeing her again forbids from conjuring words, from making any sounds that aren't sobs. So he just sobs because his mother is sorry. And she's so alive and so much, and her cheeks are flushed with vivid color, and there is no death to mar her belly, there is no fire to take her away. And yet, she cries. "I'm so sorry. I wanted none of this for you, Dean."

"'S okay," he manages to say finally. He had to say it. It was important.

"But you will be what you have to be," she looks at him with earnest love, her warm hand vibrates through the coldness of his skin. "It will give you peace, baby," she promises. "It will give you all. We have to take care of our responsibilities, they have to come before the prize," she says, a pained, broken note tainting her voice and Dean begins to wonder if it's only him that's she's trying to convince, or if she's talking to herself, too. Regardless of that, he agrees with her words.

"I know," he says dutifully, full of faith because he knows that, he knows that, he really knows that. "I messed up," Dean confesses. "I've lost him."

Sobs he barely found the force to stop, they threaten him to come back.

"You're not alone," Mary assures him calmly. "I messed up, too. I messed up and have lost first. This is my fault, not yours, my little angel, my loveliest thing."

"'M not really an angel, mom," he groans, feeling four again.

She smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. She looks like that one time in the kitchen when her smile was crying the loudest.

"No," she agrees. "You don't have to be. You're good enough as you are. And I'm with you."

"Yeah, and Cas is with me," Dean supplies, because that also is important.

"He is," she confirms, nodding and avoiding. "But is it enough? Are you whole?"

"I don't know. I don't know a lot. It pisses me off. You know how I hate to not know things."

"Don't be. There is something you've lost and you miss it."

"I know. It's kind of a problem."

"I will find it for you."

"Why?"

"Because I love you, you silly goose," she chuckles, soft notes of laughter igniting her irises at last. "Just please wait," Mary promises, petting his hair tenderly. "And let me in when I come back and knock."

"I will."

She massages his knuckles until they stop being so sore, she kisses his fingers with wordless but powerful affection just one more time, she lets him rest on white linens where splinters and the sun and sweat and flies bother him no more. She gets up, lets him go and leaves, light gold of her hair blinding him into sleep. And he drifts in her scent of roses and lilies, and he melts until he's one with it, until he's gone.

II.

"She was so young when I was dead," Dean tells Castiel, sounding full of wonder, apparently not giving much thought into a part of the subject being his own demise. He's too awed. Smile lights him up like a candle, but Castiel doesn't know how to reciprocate. His emotions differ from Dean's as far as they only can. He listens to him speak quietly and he feels very tempted to look down.

"Did she say when she's coming back?" Castiel asks instead. He needs to know how much there's left. He doubts the fact of him knowing could change anything, though.

"Soon," Dean tells him.

"Soon," Castiel echoes and doesn't like the ugly noise the promise makes.

He says nothing more. He hugs Dean and hides his face in the softness of his neck. Doesn't let go. He feels the vibration of Dean's words as he tells him. "I can't wait," and after a thoughtful pause, adds, "I think we should celebrate."

Dean tries to pull him down onto the bed, wants to elicit will from him through teasing, lustful kisses, but Castiel does nothing aside of still holding him and hiding like the shield he is. He only runs his hand over Dean's taut back so he wouldn't feel rejected. But his touch wields only warmth, lacks fire.

"Cas?" he asks, sounding worried and unsure.

"We will celebrate," Castiel answers after a moment of consideration. "We'll go for a nice long walk after you eat," he promises. "Outside."

"That's big," Dean says, managing to sound both unperturbed and amazed at the same time.

"Deserves it," he answers wistfully and kisses him piously, innocently on the back of his neck.

He leaves Dean with his meal. Promises to return to him quickly. He doesn't tell Dean that what bothered Dean in his sleep, isn't his mother.

Castiel needs to get the place ready. He needs to give them more time. He is the shield after all. It's futile, he knows. The tragedy wearing Mary's face is stronger than any bucklers, any fortresses. It's a cross that mauls minds and bones with its burden.

Acts

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.

(Corinthians 13: 4-5)

I.

Castiel remembers countless moments. To him, every single one is at once, a separate, glowing shard of the universe, and it is the whole – the endless pattern of sunshine glimmering softly on the curves of a river which surrounds his eyes akin to how the great waters of Scamander enveloped Troy. It feeds him, it mesmerizes him and constitutes his being. Like the unbeatable Troy also, he's going to fall. Yet another time. All of it because the same damn horse.

This time the horse hates him and it will huff and kick him if he tries to come close, he no more has any means to undo the disgust that plagues the animal's mouth like locust. Every time its soft and pearly-pink gates open, the swarm rushes out in legions to eat at his swollen heart until it is no more. The commander of these things, a wondrous beast that wants to go by the name of Dean even though Castiel recognizes it not, sneers when it watches him curl in pain. Dean believes the torture is righteous, of course. Otherwise, he wouldn't have done that. He still is a flower among all the just men and he wouldn't lay a hand without seeing fault. None of this gives Castiel any comfort, because knowing Dean by heart, he is more than certain the punishment doesn't come from Dean being hurt for himself and seeing it as a crime against him. He doesn't think of himself that highly, which, as Castiel despite all of his other mistakes counts, is without a doubt his biggest failure. Dean doesn't give a fuck about Dean. He's just repulsed by Castiel, he hates him, considers an evil – a threat to other things that aren't him and therefore are more important. Perhaps this is why his eyes can't convey any pain as they meet him, they are a cold wilting green, his irises so tiny they are merely slits and in the paleness of all things around them – he looks like a reptile. Basilisk eyes want to kill him. There is a promise hidden beneath his thick lashes, barely visible as if it was a spider, but Castiel reads the message. It stings him, but ultimately, it makes a spider with almost no legs and it can't hurt him, not yet. But the only thing left that Dean believes in – is that one day, if he'll be patient – it's going to. All of it because Castiel wants Dean to live. And Dean apparently wants to die, so willing and earnest to throw himself off the edge of the cliff, the fucking Lorelei he is.

He too, tries to sing Castiel down into his demise. Castiel misses the times when Dean would walk around the halls and they would echo with his rendition of "Livin on a prayer." But now he isn't curious or joyous, his voice bears saws, teeth and venom when he begins to chant icily and makes Castiel's patience get whiplash from the abrupt death of quite a long period of silence.

"There is a house in Indiana," he goes, "they call the rising," and stops, just as abruptly as he began when Castiel returned into the room. "What do they call it?" he asks and Castiel remains silent because he won't be playing this particular pointless game. "What, you bitch, is this yet another thing you can't tell me?" Dean accuses.

"Dean," Castiel says, trying to convey all the don't start thats in one damn word.

Dean lifts his eyebrows and nods as if it answered his needs. He then goes on with his song.

"They call the rising Dean," he continues mocking Castiel's tone. "And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy, and Cas, you know, I'm one."

"Dean, if you want to talk about this, this is not the right way," Castiel sighs before Dean reveals whatever part he conjured about his mother and father.

"You could at least give me a guitar if you want me to rot here," he notes. "Or a gerbil wheel," he adds only to consider his words for a moment. "Unless," he tries, pointing with mock-excitement as if enlightenment was cast upon him just now, "your dick," he says, pointing at Castiel, "was my gerbil wheel."

"Don't you dare, Dean," he groans, failing to not take the insults personally. "You know it's nothing like that."

Dean, the enraged horse, huffs in reply to that.

"Actually, Cas, I don't know anything at all," he says too sweetly and too softly. "I only accidentally stumbled and fell on knowing, because it obviously wasn't something you ever felt like granting me," Dean hisses. "In thanks to that, consider your gerbil wheel privileges revoked. Cause in this situation, I can go fuck myself, so I think I won't need you for that."

"Fine," Castiel says in a calm manner that unfortunately does nothing to hide is growing annoyance. "Then take a look into your recent memories and remind yourself that a gerbil wheel is not what we are.

"Were," Dean cuts in coldly.

"You can be angry about a handful of things regarding your problematic situation, but there was never anything unclear or not true to the nature of our relationship. I want you to understand that."

"Yeah, this would be the main problem. You wanting me to do and be things," Dean comments harshly with a sly grin that is in too many ways sharper than the teeth that wait beneath it.

"It's not the point."

"I guess it never is, is it," Dean sighs tiredly. "Why are you even here now? What do you want me to do, not do, be or not to be this time?"

"We're at war and I just want you to survive it, you reckless fool!" Castiel breaks because this really isn't the first time he's trying to have that particular conversation and gets the unsurprising result of having it a great unfinished fiasco. Dean's predictability on the subject only adds to the annoyance and feeling of hopelessness, because talking to him is like throwing glass at a wall.

"War, is that so?" Dean's malevolent song of a question only confirms Castiel's suspicions. "The whole apocalypse, archangels, devils blah, blah – that war to you?" he asks, almost curiously, but Castiel knows the truth is Dean really wants to be a siren right now, so he could lure him into some kind of a trap of what he seems as logic. "This is cold war and it's no war," he announces and Castiel wants to sigh – like that one trap exactly – but he doesn't. "You wanna know why?" Dean lets his little futile speech roll. "A war is something you fight and you, Cas," Dean spits out his name with the deepest resentment that is known to angel and man, "you're not making any moves."

"This is my move," he announces, because if Dean wasn't that blinded, he'd know that's obvious.

"Locking me down?" Dean goes, sounding sarcastically amazed at the idea.

Exactly – Castiel thinks, but doesn't say it, because it would piss Dean off even more. At times like these, it doesn't matter if he answers to Dean's pokes and prods or not, the man still will be pissed and very, very unsatisfied with his words' results. This gives Castiel a twisted and useless form of freedom, because he always ends up fucked. The only difference is, he needs to convince Dean at this point – there will be no more lullabies and forgetting the things that distract and hurt him. His grace dries steadily, but unmistakably. He's heading to its limits, to the end.

"I'm doing this for you, Dean," Castiel doesn't relent because he knows the truth is by his side and Dean is worthy and wonderful, but rendered blind by clarity and memory. "I'm doing this because of you."

Dean is shaking his head already before Castiel stops speaking.

"I don't even fucking believe in you right now," he says sounding so disappointed it sends a chill down Castiel's bones. "You're such a fucking child, you know that? Just because you can do what you want, doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want. You don't get to take everything from me only because you don't want me to scrape a knee. It's not how love works, Cas. I don't need or want you to pussyfoot around me."

"It's not always getting what you want to do, either," Castiel arguments. He can't lose Dean. He gave and defied everything for him, he's dying for him as they speak and watching him suffer hurts him more than it hurts Dean, because it's the last damn thing he ever wanted for him. But he's older than the world his love walks on, and he's seen plenty and he just knows what Dean does not – sometimes peace is better than freedom.

And these walls, they're still better than Michael's or Lucifer's hands. Castiel remembers how Dean screamed when Lilith had him torn and ripped, remembers how Dean would wail and cry and panic living the nightmare over and over and again. And maybe Dean blocked that out because he does that with many things which don't fit his current path of thoughts, but that doesn't mean Castiel forgot. He never forgets because he was infinite once. He will let Dean scream in anger. He won't let him scream in agony, that is all. His fragile little soul and bones, he will protect them for as long as he simply is.

"With my own life it isn't?" Dean says with sincere disbelief. "I don't think you get the idea of free will right," he concludes with exasperation.

Castiel just doesn't think the idea of free will is always that important. At least not where free will and stupidity try to intertwine. Or not where a darker prison awaits.

"And you don't get the idea of a possessive archangel circling you like a vulture. You don't understand the danger or the consequences."

"Oh, I've learned what kind of an adventure a handsy angel is," he winks, but there's no humor value in it woven into it at all, "so I get the general gist. Actually, as long as it's you, it seems to be worse now that I think of it."

"Seems," Castiel repeats bitterly. "That's a good word to use as you still understand nothing," he turns around and leaves, seeing that both of them are already too aggravated to stand each other's presence anymore.

And it was so beautiful for so long. They were one flesh, they were legs and hands, skins and scents and moisture of languid kisses. They were whole. Now they're a hole, again. Castiel doesn't know how to bury it, all they seem to do is dig deeper and deeper into nowhere. He doesn't understand all, either. Certainly, he doesn't understand why is it so hard for Dean to see that everything he's ever sacrificed was for the man's own good. Doesn't understand why it hurts so bad each time Dean stirs out of calmness and falls into his translucent and vile state. This time Castiel doesn't have enough power to lull him back into the warmth of half-sleep and peace. Now he's got joints which are his own and they hurt and soon, his wings shall crumble into palpable dust of a physical form and they will reek of dead meat and illnesses. He can't undo Dean into safety anymore. And he doesn't know how neither of them is meant to seek revelation. Dean's ears are deaf and his lips are vicious, so for the time being, he leaves them alone. Dean, of course, will in the meantime do his best to die.

But he won't succeed.

Despite getting weaker and more human every time he makes any use of the remains of his grace, his hearing is unfortunately still good enough to let him know Dean doesn't quit on making pretty efficient use of his vocal cords and creativity. It doesn't matter that Castiel is already two floors above him, burning herbs for protective spells, checking the sigils in the atrium and fixing them when needed with blood that is disturbingly more and more his only and finite. It doesn't matter to Dean either because he too knows that Castiel will hear him no matter what. For now, he's still going with The Animals and when his mouth insults him three-fold through the words oh mother, tell your children not to fuck what I have fucked, Castiel curses rather unimaginatively and creates a hole in the wall with a fist that for a moment even manages to express physical hurt in order to remind him that for a while now, it's entirely and solely his. The sound and pain of course make a perfect beat to match Dean's spend your lives in sin and misery in the house of the rising Cas. Listening to that makes Castiel begin to wonder if at some point Dean will resort to Metallica with hold my breath as I wish for death, oh please, God, wake me as his anthem again or if he's going to be gifted with another kind of a farewell when it comes to it. He's already had it when Dean kicked the stool from below his feet – which was the first time – and back then, Castiel remembers, it got to him for real (but after some time stopped being that terrifying). Had it also in the tub before Dean would fill his lungs with water. Had a "Gloomy Sunday" when he would try to scratch the sigils down with a fork. Castiel wishes Dean was at least half that determined to live. At some point these situations are going to be a direct danger because there will come a day when Castiel won't have enough grace left to bring Dean back at least thrice a month and keep the facility an impenetrable fortress. He already had to stop keeping Dean's memory at bay because what Michael had fixed, he no longer is strong enough to break.

Now everyone's just waiting for Troy to fall. Dean of course sees the stones already crumbling and he's scratching at the walls and throwing himself onto them so they would collapse faster. It's child play easy to him because obviously regarding Castiel and Castiel alone, he knows all. He knows how to make him come, he knows how to make him tick. Dean had mastered virtuosity in pushing all the right buttons.

II.

Michael was probably waiting the longest, but it still surprises Castiel when his archangel and current archenemy archbrother chooses to pay him a visit when he finally has an opening. He's got to be more than determined because in most of the other crucial problems, as far as Castiel remembers, the eminence would always send a handful of his lesser minions and a very irritating Zachariah to deal with whatever the fire was. But here he is, all his glory, all his wrath and pride all wrapped in soft, crimson wings, all nine pairs of them, staring at Castiel with gold, jaguar eyes condemning him from behind fine feathers so great they could cast shadows over mount Sinai with ease. Castiel is nothing, less than dust compared to the majesty of his brother because even Chrysler building itself can be no threat to entire New York and all of its iron and glass castles. Comets bow down before him, but Castiel doesn't. The part of Heaven they're in shakes and swells through Michael's very presence and his slowly building anger makes the edges of all surrounding creation boil and yet, for the first time, Castiel is unafraid. He doesn't remember himself being that certain of anything in millennia. He's seen through the lie, through the plot and through the sin against his father's commandment. He's done what is just and he won't explain himself even before Michael.

"I'm inevitable, Castiel," Michael thunders coldly. "What you're doing, this isn't escaping, it's merely delaying."

"Were you that certain of it, you wouldn't come to me on your own," Castiel answers, voice unattached. "Which is it? You wish to threaten me or to bribe me?"

"I'm here to tell you this kind of disobedience doesn't end with reeducation, brother. We will end you for this."

"So end me," Castiel says simply, shrugs to add to the disrespect. "I'm not afraid to die for him." In fact, he's honored to. If there's one thing worth dying for, it's Dean.

But Michael does nothing, even though he can do everything. Castiel nods slowly, having the confirmation for his assumption.

"That's right, you can't do it. You can't kill me. You need him to say yes to you. And you can't have Lucifer's orthodox supporters lay a hand on him. Without me, he'll hate you and they'll slaughter him and destroy in ways it will be impossible even for you to bring him back," he says, doesn't hide the satisfaction painting itself richly on his humanlike features and in his voice.

Michael's fury makes the seams of Heaven rip at their edges.

"What do you want? Don't you understand you're working against God's will?"

Castiel chuckles darkly, because the desperation in Michael's words is bright as day.

"You're working against it," Castiel chides. "Didn't he ask us to love mankind and to protect it? You want to use them as tools and you don't care if they live or die, you don't care that fighting with Lucifer will bring destruction down on billions. You're focused on just one goal and it has nothing to do with God's will in the end."

"Our father, he wrote him and sewn him and gave him to me," Michael counters, avoiding what Castiel certainly won't stop bringing up. "Your crime and blindness won't erase a claim and a right that is older than you. He's meant for me, a bride to my grace because it was written so by our father. Don't you dare twist the prophecies into things they are not only because you are rotten with sin."

"Brother, if I am rotten with sin, you are already dry, white bones," Castiel remarks. "The fight was commanded through your quarrels, God had nothing to do with it. He said nothing and then he left. You're only talking propaganda, Michael. You know it too that the battle wasn't written by our father. It's what broke his heart. Looking at the two of you, he saw failure. He couldn't stand you. You're the reason why he left," he hisses. "But you're still too proud to admit it. Proud, bitter and demented like Lucifer. You make a sorry sight for something supposedly this grand."

"You have no right to serve judgment!" Michael rages, casts scorching winds of holy fire into all four of Castiel's faces, but he doesn't stand down even though his grace scowls in pain. "You have no knowledge to declare anyone demented. You have never seen me, nor Lucifer before."

"I wonder why," Castiel muses coldly. "Neither of you will get a toy to soothe a broken heart. You won't get to poison the divine yet another time. Not the ones on which God had worked the hardest."

"You speak heresy which you don't even mean, Castiel. There is another reasoning behind your doings and it is dark and wicked as you are, it's not God or his work crawling around your mind. I have seen the way you look at him, the way you react to him and it is all filth," Michael spits disgusted.

"You misarrange conceptions, brother," Castiel retorts, won't let himself be bothered with the groundless accusation.

"Do I?" Michael asks, mockery in his voice thick and palpable. "You volunteered for the mission, you little thing, then you stalked your vessel and mine and you plotted and you stole and misused the power you were given to rip your charge out Hell's throat, but you never even let it swallow that one man. You fell, you ran and you hid him in a Bastille of your own making for nothing? You're dying for nothing? Or maybe for those billions of people, who in Egypt and in Gomorrah you had still slaughtered even though you cried? For his mother, father and brother you've never spared a thought to save?" he huffs. "You speak of mankind, but you still have his thighs on your lips," he adds and Castiel swallows thickly at that, licks his mouths, tries to clear them from Dean's residue but to no avail.

"I love humanity more than you do still," Castiel barks back angrily. "I see them as equal to us and worthy. You see pretty pets worth keeping. And take Dean out of this, you have no right to speak of him for you want him as your greatest pet, something that would fill the hole that eats you all the time since the fall, since father had abandoned you. You just want a reason to gloat, to shine again. And this, my brother, is a very low motivator."

Michael snorts bitterly at that, his voice blows into full, almost jovial laughter, the universe shakes with it, and confused, stars stop roaming until the sound of an archangel laughing wilts down and he chooses to speak calmly again.

"You're impossible," he states. "You," he accents with wild and personal fury, "are demented, Castiel. I saw you. I saw you dream of him, I saw you fuck him until he keened and curled into you like a kitten, I saw your hungry hands melting into him and not letting go, I saw you wait until he'd wail your name and I saw you build walls and walls until he saw his kin no more."

"I made those walls to protect him from you," Castiel answers evenly. "And you saw the things as you understood them because they only were what you would do to him. You'd fuck and hold and force yourself because you're needy, afraid and alone. A luxury-spoiled Siamese cat without its twin, without its master to feed it diamonds and warm gazes," Castiel accuses with disgust flowing through him. He wonders, with even some amount of amazement in it, how one can have so many eyes and still be so blind, seeing what wants to be seen, not what is. "I love him, I take care of him, whereas you're broken, twisted and ugly. Dean won't give you back what you've lost," he explains because this is what it is.

"And yet, he is beautiful, pristine and wholly mine. I am his family more than you'll ever be, I'm closer than you'll ever come," Michael spits through gritted teeth and rustled carmine feathers. "I'll make him clean, I'll make him into light. He will hate you and carve knives into you himself. He'll be the one to end you with relief and a smile on his face."

"And you're still going to be and have nothing," Castiel leers. "Because this isn't what you want and what you need. We all know."

Michael smiles gloomily.

"It doesn't matter which one of us is pathetic, or if it's neither of us. The truth and the law stand by my side. Your furious, pitiful and petty words won't make me afraid of you, little bird. Your time has numbers and limits, your walls are old, weak and damaged. I will take him away from you while he's still cradled in your dirty arms, this I promise," he says softly. "You will sleep and kiss with one eye open, because you won't know anymore what lies beneath the delicacy of his lips."

"Not your happiness, Michael, I assure you," Castiel says dryly and the archangel frowns for a moment until he regains his composure.

"Perhaps his does, though," he feigns nonchalance. "Something you never gave him," he adds, stays only for a second longer to devour the rich note of pain seeping out of Castiel's grace as the accusation stings him. He leaves then, saying nothing more. He's said enough and both of them know this.

The toxin in his wound swells and itches for long after Michael's departure. Castiel wakes up, furious with the fact he's so weak he needs to sleep, fully aware how impossibly close he is to being no more. Buried under the warmth of his tender hold, Dean stirs impatiently in his sleep, unaware of the nightmares that wish to hunt him in the light of day. Castiel is mesmerized with watching his chest rise and fall evenly, marvels at the peace sleep gives to his body, the one he remembers being always furious, afraid and tense, but looking at him, even though he has him and loves him and brushes his lips past his neck with soft reverence, it doesn't give him joy. For months he will stare somberly at Dean and wonder: does he make him happy?

Has he ever seen Dean happy beside that one time in the garden right before when infatuated by the sight, he tore down Dean's innocence and in all ways he knew, he had him through means even possession doesn't give?

Has he?

III.

This time Dean tries to go down quietly. No Metallica, no nothing. Of course, he talks, his stern words mostly hisses and insults addressed at Castiel. In terms of dying, he just happens to do it along the way. He won't eat, he won't drink, and it's day something. "Chamomiles can do that, too," he laughs bitterly, weakly and Castiel frowns. "What's the matter, honey? Ain't I appealing to you anymore?" he grins. "Too skinny and dry for my sweet boy's liking?" he wonders, trying to sound as pleasantly as poisons get. "Come on here, tiger. Just one step closer. Come, break my other fucking hand, it's dry and weak enough."

"Dean," Castiel begs, tears in his eyes, because that's nonsense and it hurts him to listen to it.

"Come on, love. You don't want me to break your fucking little wings, do you?" he asks. "Because I will, darling. I will, I promise. You will squeal like a bitch and I will fuck holes into them, okay? You know," he shrugs, "will just give you some of what you gave me, just to give you the idea of how it is to be me when you love me," he spits and laughs sounding acidic and ill.

But when Castiel does come closer to try to reason with him, his eyes go wild and feral, he starts thrashing around frenetically, almost mindlessly and hissing countless panicked and broken growls of "Don't fucking touch me."

So Castiel leaves.

Around three days with more of the same later, Dean is on the verge of death from dehydration. Tiredly, Castiel heals him, his face lacking any expression. Dean's dull glare returns back to life and as it blooms into power from weakness, it grows deadly.

"Hello, Dean," he greets him flatly. "Were you having fun?" Dean spits into his face. Castiel doesn't even bother wiping that off. Seventy more knives cut through the repulsed way Dean stares at him in absolute silence. "Do it again, I'll heal you again," Castiel informs without any emotions. They aren't needed here.

"Fuck you."

"I have a meal for you," he pretends he didn't hear that. In terms of usefulness, he really didn't. "I'll bring it here and you're going to eat it," he says calmly.

"And why the fuck would I do that for you, sunshine?" Dean raises an eyebrow.

"Because this time I won't leave this room until you do. So you either talk to me or you eat."

"You should offer me a carrot, not two sticks, dick wheel mine."

"For everything there is a season," Castiel cuts.

And this, this is the coldest and longest winter they're having. Everything's so dead and empty, the other half of the bed in which Dean lies, cuts Castiel eyes with the whiteness of unoccupied space. It calls and lures him from time to time, the side that he remembers as his, but he never comes near it. Not since Dean declared war and death upon them. He catches Dean looking at him. Dean smiles, but that's an ugly, inhuman thing: Dean just knows. He decides to stretch himself on the bed and yawn, reveal and present the treasure of his skin, his muscles, the lean contours of his body. His smile widens, all challenges, fuck yous and deliberate small gestures of great temptations. "I don't happen to have a meal for you, I guess I'll just dine alone," he chirps.

Castiel turns around on his feet and walks out to bring Dean the aforementioned dinner, hoping that for a few minutes of their companionship he will at least chew on something else besides hatred.

Dean's got something else on his mind. Castiel scolds himself, because he should have seen that one coming as it wouldn't have been the first time, either. Five minutes later when he returns with a sufficient meal, Dean's naked on the bed, spread, smirking and waiting, hungry for a reaction. Castiel gives him none. He leaves the tray on the table and leans against a wall, offering Dean an aggravated, dispassionate grimace. This, of course, doesn't throw Dean off his game. Quite the opposite – it makes him invest himself even more and to be honest, Castiel, despite being a great strategist, simply doesn't know what would be the protocol of correct action to that. It's bad when he plays along (checked the first time), bad if he doesn't (checked also, the second time), so it's bad if he leaves and if he stays (tried both). Such a cunning beast Dean is these days. Castiel just wishes he was a human again. Not a chance, obviously. Dean is going to be as primal and tempting as it gets or perhaps beyond that even he'll go.

"Hot in here," Dean comments innocently and slides a hand down his belly. Drags it languidly, to be precise and Castiel doesn't like where it's going. "Hope you don't mind?" he asks, a false smile painted thickly on his face. Castiel doesn't react, but he minds. "Fantastic," he says enthusiastically and with no further ado, wraps that hand around his cock, slowly and thoroughly awakening it into full hardness, lets out a content moan. With the other hand of his, he only messes around the plate. "I like to play with my food a bit," he breathes heavily, "just like you turned out to like, baby."

Castiel tsks, crosses his hands over his chest. Dean continues to fuck himself with great enthusiasm because he knows it will without a doubt infuriate Castiel and make him leave, so Dean could throw his food away, repeat the dying and healing game until there will be no more grace to have it continue so Dean will either die and that's it, or is going to get Castiel weak enough so he'll be able to kill him with his bare hands. Both would be good and relieving, as far as Dean probably calculates in the darkest parts of his heart.

What the angel doesn't want to admit even to himself, but knows also, is that Dean's got yet another goal to achieve through his spectacular performance: he wants Castiel to break and give into the temptation of his flesh, which against his will, plays along eagerly to say the very least, because if his ungrateful dick could break through the fabric of his slacks, it wouldn't think about it for a second more. With the celestial force and calmness he still has some left of, Castiel ignores the growing issue and the heat building up inside of his body. Dean's feral, reptile eyes don't fail to notice the unfortunate lick of lips that escaped Castiel's control and it ignites the man further. He spreads his legs wider to make Castiel see all the goods and he bucks wildly into his own touch, calling and luring him through the smallest insults, moaning out his name every time. "Come on, Cas, I know you wanna feed me with that meat and have this over with," he purrs. "Cas, I know you can make me moan and writhe better than that. Come on, baby, show me, you don't want me to disappoint you no more do you?" he asks, voice thrumming with pleasure. "Cas," he whimpers, "Cas, Jesus, Cas, how long is it," he pants after some time, "before you forget how I taste and smell and beg for you?" he lets out a broken little laugh, which has Castiel at the brink of leaving the room and shutting the door so hard Sam Winchester is going to hear it from wherever the hell he is right now, even if he's on Pluto's moon. "Fuck," Dean growls as he shoves a finger into himself. "You gonna be drooling and stupid like me when you forget things, too, honey? That how things work or is it just me to be this lucky because of you?"

"Dean," Castiel warns and he swears, this is the only one he's going to get. "I really suggest you shut up and eat."

"Or what," he breathes, "gonna fuck me till I'm all quiet and pliant and lovely and yours? C'mere, angel," he spreads as far as his legs and hands let him as he obscenely exposes his entrance, "lemme black widow you, knock yourself out," he suggests sweetly. "Fuck and die, can you do that for me, baby?"

"That's it," Castiel decides quietly. He raises his palm until he's certain Dean sees it and curls his fingers inward.

Shock startles Dean immediately as he seems to be choking on air with the unexpected flow of an exhausting, bordering on painful orgasm rushing through him, making him pant and whine in ways he can't form insults or words anymore. He shoves his little claws down the sheets, arches and writhes madly like a serpent, trying to turn away at least a little so Castiel wouldn't get to see the fear and betrayal in his eyes, for a moment again vulnerable and human and lost, but he does. When it's all over and Dean regains some of his breath, behind his eyes, once more there is hatred and ice and nothing akin to humanity.

"Fuck you," he manages to whisper brokenly. "Fuck and fuck and fuck you."

"Eat," Castiel commands, not even sparing him a glance. Without a word, he walks out of the room.

"Thought you wanted to talk," Dean utters, sounding weak and defeated.

The only thing Castiel gives Dean now is a soft click of the door that perhaps is even louder than having it slammed. He hears Dean replying to that with throwing his plate against a wall.

IV.

Castiel knows Lucifer walks free because Samhain got out, because hunters would start do die off strangely in masses as if they were cows infected with some kind of fatum before his brothers would very unhurriedly put the fire out. Because the waters of Mississippi started flowing backwards, all dead fish and stale, toxic waters, people prayed to God, but as expected, nobody came to spare them when they cried. It took seven thousand women and men and children to die in Louisiana alone before the alleged protectors of mankind deemed it appropriate to finally interfere. It took sixty seals more and it took Dean picking up a blade and slicing something open and it was enough due to Michael's newest acts of light and law-giving, even if it had occurred only in Dean's head. Judging by Dean's attitude and the archangel's morbid promise, Castiel dares to make a guess that it was probably him who was laid bleeding on Winchester's table where Dean's hands for once, with meticulous precision they were famous for, made him into something else than a bliss overridden animal.

Lucifer only walks because Michael is coming. To Castiel, it serves a reminder of why he is really here and what had he rebelled against. He knows he made the good call. He also knows he has to tell Dean about all of this even though he doesn't want to infuriate him any deeper than he already is, boiling with bitterness and this never-quieting roar that demands of him to take action and take onto himself whatever this world has been wronged with. He'd have to tell Dean anyway. He walks back into that lion's den, afraid of what he is going to find there. The only thing he's certain of is that Dean is alive – he's been relieving his most basic needs through his grace, but they hadn't seen each other in person ever since Castiel snapped and walked out a week ago. He finds the man on one of the upper floors – he gave him at least the liberty to roam where he pleases. It stopped mattering – at this point Castiel's means of protections are throughout the entire facility are comparably weak. It is merely a veil, because his sacrum is merely a veil beneath which lies nothing save for an almost human heart that keeps beating more and more terrified the closer he gets to Dean. He knows where he is and the unneeded flood of memories covers Castiel with unbearable nausea.

He opens the chapel's door and they groan, annoyed and offended by being awakened from their sleep. Dean had to register the noise, but he remains quiet, empty, almost catatonic gaze transfixed upon the dirty window. But he's there, at least something is, because the room alone isn't quiet and Dean's arms don't seem to be as dead as his face is. Without even looking at the cross, the man disturbs his own silence by throwing a holy figure at it. Another one breaks into pieces below the wooden symbol of torture and redemption seven, maybe eight seconds after the angel enters the place. Castiel apparently isn't worth interrupting the program. So he sits down in one of the distant rows and waits until Dean runs out of things to throw, which should be soon.

"Came here to pray for forgiveness?" he asks sometime after his hands have nothing to hold onto anymore other than his own stubborn wrath.

"I came here to find you," Castiel informs carefully.

"To pray for my forgiveness?" Dean's voice still sounds dead, as if all the life he's ever had in him was where his eyes want to be – on the other side of the window.

"So you are the deity here, I presume?"

"I thought that's what you tried to teach me all along," he says thoughtfully. "Wouldn't be surprised if that was a lie, too," he concludes.

"No," Castiel cuts it before Dean's theories fly too high and bury Castiel too deep. "It never was a lie. But sadly that's more of a cross for you to bear rather than a gift to take pleasure from."

"No shit," Dean huffs. "So you found me. And now what?"

"I want to make a confession. I don't ask for being absolved, but as a deity, it's on your list to listen."

"Alright," he sighs. "Come here, ninety-nine problems," Dean beckons him with a hand, "let's play twenty one questions."

Castiel does as he's told and takes a seat next to Dean. Dean still won't look at him, but that's not exactly a surprise.

"Ask away."

"Why didn't you want to fuck me?" he shoots first, tone of his voice analytic, cold, suggesting and offering nothing.

The question, of course, startles Castiel, to say the very least.

"Didn't expect you to ask that," he says, mild terror in him biting at the corners of his being.

"And I don't expect you to make any decisions or expressing any opinions in regards to what I ask you," Dean informs, unrelenting. "I expect you to answer."

"I never want to fuck you, Dean," he exhales tiredly. "There's no point in giving you a sign of my love when you don't want it or when you wish to twist it into something ugly. If you're determined to prove that I'm a monster who locked you in a grave to cause a stir at your loins as it pleases, it's about time you've found another hobby. You're going to get disappointed with yourself and hurt."

"Hurt?!" Dean hisses, disbelieving. "With myself? Disappointed? This is big bag of bullshit, buddy."

"Dean," Castiel starts cautiously, "this isn't the first time you regained a considerable amount of your knowledge," he admits and watches Dean trying not to react, but that still doesn't stop the muscles of his jaw from twitching furiously. "There's no use in dwelling into that. I don't regret what I've done and you already have nothing but hatred towards me," Castiel adds and Dean swallows hard, as if it was physically painful to him. "If this is any wicked consolation to you," he goes on, "you will remain conscious and knowing, I won't put you down ever again – I can't anymore."

"Why are you telling me this exactly," Dean says, for a reason Castiel can't decipher, sounding like he's begging.

"You have used sex to try to break away from me before," he answers and this time it's difficult for him to let these words out. "For your own good I made you forget your own failure."

"Failure because I'm still here?" Dean suggests.

"No, still being here is the result of your failure."

"Explain," he insists.

"That's all you need to know about this one. Anything else, go ahead and ask. But with this one we're done, Dean," Castiel growls, determined not to make Dean feel any worse about himself and them as he already does.

"Explain!" Dean shouts wild-eyed, for a moment forgetting that he's not supposed to look at him. He throws a punch and when his fist connects with Castiel's mouth, there's blood on the chapel floor. Now that Castiel remembers, and being here, remembers too vividly – there's blood on the chapel floor again, only that now it's a promise of death, not of life; thick red blots born out of a need to destroy, not of a need to love. He wonders if Dean's thinking about that now, too. But Dean is unreadable even more than God's intentions themselves ever were and he looks neither pleased nor displeased with himself and his violent hands. "Are you fucking deaf?" he hisses as the only confirmation that he's still here enough to remember how to speak.

Looking at him, Castiel knows that the tiny reaction aside, Dean is far, far away from here, from him. He's wondering where did he run off to, but there's no sense in asking. There's no sense in many things that concern the two of them. Castiel spits some of his blood out and he regrets being so human at this point. Not because he bleeds – those are useless details and they don't matter here – but because there is this ugly, earthly thing developing inside of him that wants to sneer and wants to tell Dean the truth just to make the man regret asking. Wants Dean to feel a bitter tang inside of his mouth, too.

"Cas," Dean sighs, but Castiel doesn't know if there's weariness in the word because Dean's that tired with him in particular or because he's sorry for lashing out at him like that.

"We were both stupid," he says delicately, sorrowfully. Puts his charcoal dark human anger aside. He promised to give Dean compassion and understanding no matter what. So he delivers. "We were both naïve, Dean," he inhales with effort because what he's about to say is going to hurt, and he doesn't even know, despite being millennia old, which words would express it best. There are none, but there is no time to invent any. "You thought you would break me, I thought I could fix you. We were wrong," he sighs, "so wrong, dear."

"What happened?" Dean whispers – like he always would when he's too afraid to know and too afraid not to.

"You came to me," Castiel says, voice breaking. "But you couldn't raise your hand on me, you held and clang to me instead. Even though you hated me, you only knew how to love me," he adds and watches Dean's hands curl into fists. "After you woke up the next day, still next to me, you were like a ghost, Dean. I could and still can stand you hating me – that's your damn right," he continues, but doesn't miss the fact Dean's mouth mutters a soundless jesus fuck under his breath. "But I couldn't watch you hate and punish and detest yourself like that. You're just a human, Dean. You're designed to crave love. It's not your fault you loved me even though you shouldn't have."

"Leave," Dean whispers, not letting him say anything more. "Get the fuck out."

Truth be said, Castiel expected that.

"Lucifer is coming here, he'll find us," he only says as his goodbye.

"Not now, Cas," Dean replies hoarsely, as if he was about to cry. Perhaps he is, Castiel thinks. "Now get out."

He is. He absolutely is. Castiel rushes out and doesn't have to turn around and look to know Dean's got his face already hidden in his trembling palms and he's sobbing into them, pretending he's invisible like that.

He wants to stay, but he knows Dean just won't let him. Not now. So now he gets out as told, since this is what his little broken god has commanded.

V.

The first smell that gets to Castiel's vessel's senses is blood. It splatters all over the calm, bright walls as the beautiful, damaged sacrum writhes around in last, unconscious convulsions. The infernal beast, even though it has acquired its goal, dives its mouth into the fragile body once more to take another bite because it's hungry and vain. Less than a moment later, it collapses dead, all light from its eyes falling into complete darkness before the same can happen to its victim.

It won't. Because Castiel has got Dean now. He takes the porcelain pale man into his grip, his blood dripping steadily on the devout salesman's shoes. That too won't matter. Lilith is no more and Castiel has got Dean now and he will remake the near nothing into something whole, into the divinity he was first created as. Slowly and steadily, weave by weave, thread after thread and one tendon after another, he will grant the perfection its form. But first, he lets him sleep, before the last flicker of life scatters into nothing, before the soul passes away where Castiel won't let it go.

So Dean's chest keeps dancing into the rhythm of existing, beautiful and steady as an unrushed wave bathing in the sunrise as Castiel mills air into his lungs with a hum of his grace that still is stronger than it ever was – all thrumming with the power meant to conquer Hell and its demons and sins. As he gives Dean back the cells, the muscles, the sacred drops of blood that were taken from him, piece by piece, he is quiet, thorough and careful. The demons and the sisters and brothers he betrayed – they reel around his name and curse and caw, a murder of celestial and smoke-borne crows. They all seek the song of his grace, they want to find him and give him eyes and a liver so they could claw them out, they want to undo both him and the holy man because Castiel had chosen to be Prometheus.

They won't find him for his grace barely chants, barely hums and he works slow and quiet, touch by touch, drop by drop. And Dean, he sometimes shudders in his sleep. Castiel will shush, will calm him down.

Later, when there is enough of life brought back into him, Dean starts to wake up from time to time. When he does, he thrashes around and screams and keeps calling for his brother. Castiel scratches away Lilith and the hellhound and dying from his mind, he gives Dean peace. He'll give Dean all. Until full safety comes, Castiel shall be his anchor. His brother, too. Dean has sacrificed and gave humanity so much, he deserves all that is calm and good and safe. Castiel is willing to listen and to give. Castiel will be his family – because this one man, in his eyes that have always marveled at all that is righteous, is worth more than his brethren and their quarrels and their power. Myriads of them, compared to Dean and his holy heart, they are thirty pieces of silver. What's worse – they are Sanhedrin as they were the ones to concoct the poisonous plan which would send the mankind's savior down to a painful and ungrateful death. But Castiel didn't let them have that. He teaches Dean to live again and it gives him joy to watch him bloom, fresh and young – again a child free of burdens and blood. In the safe lights of day, Dean loves and Dean trusts and Dean is – he chirps merrily about his brother, about his treasures and his past – and what Castiel can, he shares with him. As the night falls upon them, it rips screams of terror through Dean's throat and again and again and again, and until he passes out, he wails and begs for his brother to make it stop because there are teeth on his face and there's vile laughter of a white-eyed monstrosity piercing his ears, and he dies, and he dies, and he dies, crying about his hands and legs and his belly – all of them in his mind once more being torn into bloody rags. But Castiel is Dean's second brother for now, and he stops all of it, makes it go away, tears layers of rotten memory until all is clean and good.

Somewhere along the way Dean starts forgetting about the first brother he's had.

Castiel can mourn the loss as long as Dean is safe and as longs as he sleeps at nights without shiver-filled songs of weeping and staring into the ruthless eyes of a Hell-beast.

VI.

"Cas," he hears the smallest word of prayer thrumming through him, through his synapses. It echoes not only around the leftovers of his grace, but it roams in his blood which he could swear it stopped frozen for a glimpse of a moment, it gets to his chest and to his belly and they constrict nervously. "We ain't done talking," he hears and then the prayer cuts.

Castiel rushes to the chapel because he always, always comes when Dean calls.

Dean's eyes are still red and burning when he sees him again. He's sitting on the altar, clearly waiting for Castiel to come. The stained glass paints him all into warmths and sunlights, but his face breaks the illusion away, it keeps ice carved into it with Dean's grimace offering stern promises of an absolute lack of forgiveness.

"Now sit," and Castiel sits. "Say you really didn't want me to get into Michael's hands. Met the guy, he's a fucking liar asshole – are all of you motherfuckers like that?" he asks rhetorically, for a moment getting himself off track and Castiel waits, lets Dean wander around his own heart for as long as the man pleases. Doesn't answer with a yes. In Dean's head that probably goes without saying, anyway. "He's worse than you, I give you that. You maybe fucked me senseless and dried half of my hand into shit to take care of me better, Florence," he mocks the painful and shameful necessity, "but Jesus, you at least never cross-dressed as my mom. I mean, Jesus, guys? Where do you get that shit from? Lower your amphetamines a half or change the damn dealer, really."

"Is this some kind of an olive branch you're trying to give me, Dean?" Castiel asks and is truly amazed with how weak he sounds.

"This isn't anything," he clears out. "'M just saying I see where your determination comes from. Doesn't change the fact it's determination to keep doing wrong. You still smell shit and I'll tell you why: why do you have me stay away from Sam? If you're such a sweet puppy for humanity, for me, then why do you deny me that? All I see, Cas, is a sick fuck who effectively uses the opportunity to have me all for himself. To always have me when I let you, to have me yearn your attention cause there's no one fucking else. And you know what, Cas? I don't like it," Dean explains with nonchalance that cuts through Castiel like a horde of poisoned knives. "You'd be jealous of me talking to my damn brother because you're a possessive lonely bitch, that's what you look like," he scoffs.

"You got this the other way around, I know how much Sam means to you. And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing, but you read my motivation wrong."

"Oh, I'm sorry," he laughs bitterly in Castiel's tired face, "I must have mistaken all those hay and pines distracted with your dick mauling my ass for my and mine or something. My bad," Dean shrugs, throwing a disgusted and challenging grin. Castiel only shakes his head.

"Those are two different fabrics of two separate realities. I love you and I want you – it's how I express that. But I also love you and care for you and the ones who you love – by keeping your brother safe is how I express that," he groans, irritated.

"I beg your pardon?" Dean raises his eyebrows in disbelief mixed with honest interest. "The fuck what?"

"I know that he will always come first for you. I know you raised and treated him as yours. I know you sacrificed everything for him and would have done it for him again. I was just saving you the trouble. The farther Sam is from you, the better for him. Not because of you," he adds right away, seeing Dean's heart breaking all over his face, hearing an accusation in Castiel's words. "But because of Lucifer who wants to get to him as much as Michael wants to get to you. And if they get what they want, they will use your bodies to destroy each other. The last thing you'll see will be either Sam putting an end to you, or you putting an end to your brother. If they have you close, making it this easy for them, they will torture both of you until you say yes. When it comes to each other, they know nothing holy, they have no limits."

"Why do they fight?" Dean asks and gets Castiel completely off guard again with his choice for a question.

"Why do siblings fight?" he says. "The question you should ask yourself and think over is why were the two of you chosen for them."

Dean mulls over this quietly for a while. "I might know where to start. I'm gonna talk with the douche bag," he concludes.

"Can't let you do that."

"Your time of letting or not letting me is over and you best get used to it," Dean barks. "From now on I'm doing all the talking and all the deciding. You have nothing to lose – they're coming here anyway, both of them. So you might wanna rot and imagine yourself holding onto me till the last second away from you drowning like it's Titanic or something – and this is not gonna happen, this I promise you right now," Dean clarifies, "or you can let me try to do something so there at least is a chance of someone not ending dead."

Castiel sighs. "You don't have my blessing," he announces, but his voice leaks with exhaustion that tells Dean he's giving up on this fight.

"Well, fuck your blessing, then," Dean nods and smiles in an evil parody of a thank you.

"So what – you wish to think about your reckless strategy for the remaining time?" Castiel asks, doesn't bother to hide his skepticism – there is no point to that sort of courtesy.

"I don't need no strategy," Dean huffs, clearly offended by the assumption to the marrow of his bones. "Maybe they idiots are old as balls, but I've got bigger experience in being a brother, that's what."

"And you dared to call my move stupid," Castiel comments. "Good luck with that, Dean. Why don't I just kill us both while I still fucking can to at least save you the suffering," he groans enraged, voice lower than he's used it in years.

"Actually, Cas, you can do something to numb me down while we wait. Should do good for your pissy-pansy bitch fit, too."

"What," he sighs, rolling his eyes.

"I need to get drunk," Dean explains like it's obvious. "You should too. Maybe you'd shut up about the issue for once."

"Dean," Castiel still insists, but he supposes it's more or less pro forma since he slowly but unmistakably registers himself giving into giving less and less of a fuck because all he was fighting for is more than determined to idiotically give himself on a silver plate to get slaughtered.

"If I have to die and watch something bad happen before," Dean clearly forces his voice not to shiver, but fails – it costs him a lot to say it, but costs him even more to say it without revealing who is the mysterious person he doesn't want to see something bad happening to, and on the bottom of his heart, Castiel can't help but wonder why. "Then I don't wanna die sober, Cas, I can't," he says, tone of his words stable, but his eyes once more human and so terrifyingly begging.

He just nods. He thinks he might even understand that to some extent. All this time he failed to be Dean's brother – he's been all things else, but truth is, never that one. He's going to be one now. Now's the time. The only time they have.

"What is the poison of your choice then, Dean?" he asks, smiling weakly with just a corner of his mouth.

Dean smiles as well, but Castiel doubts it's a courtesy meant for him. Dean probably smiles at all the scotch he's going to get for him with that one last instant flight of his.

When Castiel returns a blink of an eye later, Dean can see his wings – or rather – what's left of them. Finding in himself a mercy holiday to celebrate, he doesn't comment on it even though he could easily throw himself a feast of rich, colorful insults and comparisons.

"For the end, then," he says instead, pointing with his chin at the amber bottles Castiel is cradling in his hands.

"For the end," he echoes and sits down heavily on the altar, next to Dean.

VII.

There were three times when Dean would surprise Castiel with a painful slap of his clarity. For the third time, when the man opens his eyes and watches him like a beast intending to strangle its prey, he knows it was Michael's doing now, not just fragments of memory a shampoo or fireworks could bring back to life. Dean knows all, or at least so he thinks. He holds Castiel's arm softly as they're still entangled and inseparable in their bed, but there lingers death beneath his cold, cruel touch.

"Hiya, Cas," Dean chirps with a television-flawless smile and he hates Castiel with all of his wholly conscious, boiling soul, with all his guts and he wants him to die somewhere between the filthiest racks of Hell, the cutting through meat sweetness of his voice already bearing the promise that he'll take him there. "You sleep well? Cause I been sleeping ages," he says almost singing.

Castiel's fallen like Eden before, he's fallen like Sodoma already. Now the memory of Troy's fall comes back to him in vivid, bloody details. His lethal little Helen is waiting patiently for a reaction of any kind, stroking Castiel's bicep with his fingers and he catches himself trying to figure out if this is an accident or a deliberate part of the grand revenge – one that calls back to the woods.

Revelation

Wash awayall my iniquityand cleanseme from my sin.For I know my transgressions,and my sin is always before me.Against you, you only, have I sinnedand done what is evil in your sight;so you are right in your verdictand justified when you judge.

(Psalm 51: 2-4)

I.

He thought he finally knew everything, but only now it occurs to him how little he really does know or control. Especially when it comes to himself. This is perhaps what makes him feel defeated the most (although the list of such things is long, putting that transgression aside, Dean finds the time to notice in between pursuing violent acts of self-oriented betrayal). But he won't think about it now or at least he'll try (though if he's honest to himself, and he wants to be, trying contains failure in its very structure. Or so Sammy says neurolinguists or some fuckers say. Now he remembers that).

There are things and sounds that wrap around his senses – a thick cobweb of small touches and wet clicks where hunger meets need and lips feed him and eat all at once. Shivers lick his spine when he focuses on the feeling, on the richness of contact, of mouths and tongues and teeth, in the slick, wet trails they leave all over him. He gets lost in all of it, gets deaf, everything is merely the noise of static that has long blended into the world and is not to be heard and noticed. He thinks he's doing the same to his hatred, now. It couldn't save him, couldn't free him, though he wishes it would. But no. Dean went to jail, as in, went directly to jail, didn't pass go, didn't collect two hundred dollars, a bitch nor a motherfucker. Got drunk, got here, got like this, got a problem. And the problem with the problem would be that now he knows everything. Everything save figuring out why he's doing this to himself (other than because he's Dean and he's stupid, cause for once, that's not enough for a plausible explanation). He kisses back, maybe kisses first (not sure), and exhales tiredly into Castiel's mouth, which sadly is still alluring (this is sure), and oddly, is as docile as a kitten, tamed as he doesn't recall it being ever. And he can make comparisons now since he remembers all. So Dean wonders: if he tamed Cas?; or if he's going to?; or if it's fucking worth it at all?

He's mixing and brewing too many old and half-digested thoughts and they start to reek of puke. He stops stirring that shit-pot for a moment and orients his mind on something else, less abstract, more physical. His kisses are desolate, his hands weary and he's so, so stupid, so stupid it's sad (sad, sad, sad and sadder also). Maybe that's what his mouth is grieving: the loss of his mind. Here, now, where he thought he finally had it back. Perhaps he has, but all that remains is just ashes because human mind after all is finite and there is a certain number of times a video-tape like that can get wiped out to death and still work. After this comes only the functional equivalent of fuck you. He's probably passed that number twenty times, but whatever. Dean swallows the taste of Cas – the ill ambrosia he missed for so many long days of sleeping, of trying to carve liquefied resentment and disgust into shapes, of starving, dying and of hating. Cas tastes of cinders, of salt. Probably because he's kissing off the wet shameful trails of Dean's tears that may or may not contain the relics of his scorched mind. He doesn't know. He just knows he needs this (needs Cas) even though he most likely doesn't want it (and Cas anymore). Doesn't know what he wants, either (his car probably, but that's as clear as it gets). But Cas is here, he's warm and he's given up and he's so beautiful and bearable when he's this fragile, when he no longer does and undoes all wires, and they're both drunk and bound to each other in a way Dean isn't, and he thinks that he'll never be, powerful enough to tear down. He loves him, he hates him – this much he knows for sure. He wants to puke both of these things out. He keeps swallowing them instead. That and Cas and ashes and the sobs that keep coming, thrashing around his throat like infuriated wolves. He can hear them howl.

Cas shushes him, just holds him in his arms, covers with his dying wings, rocks him like Dean remembers rocking Sammy in his cradle when he cried. So maybe it's no wolves. Maybe it's him. And fuck, Dean has to stop shaking. He has to strangle Cas, has to kiss and breathe him in, has to lie down with him and eat his warmth like a parasite or a moth or a parasite moth, has to get him on his back and press his own weight onto Cas because maybe then his wings would break to the end, to rumpled yellow paper, to dust and Cas'll scream and he'll cry and they are going to be equals. And Dean's gonna pet the moist, red wounds at his shoulders with his decoupage-dried hand and he's gonna laugh. And he's gonna cry with him and for him, then. He will pity when the hate evaporates from his skin, expelled from his soul and raw, clear mind, purified through all the sweat he will bleed on this altar again, but this time the holy figures won't watch. They lie down broken beneath the cross – a tribute to the one god who never left him: despair.

All it took for him to lose his balance was a one honest drunk sigh of sincere regret and everything Dean tried to equilibrate and put into order collapsed again into stones that shall never be whole again. His false hideout is no more and it is condemned for time, two times and half a time, exactly like the walls of Jerusalem's temple. Dean just can't tell whether whiskey was the devil that tempted him into blindness or the new light that made him see and think: we can fix this. Whatever it was, it was there, it was him. Hazily, he tries to recall how it even went that he's eaten, eaten and eaten again, his hungry body dancing to the music that Cas is like it used to dance before.

So: after the last round he said he's going to his bed. And it could've been the end of things.

Somehow it mattered when Cas murmured with nostalgia that it used to be their bed, once. And it could've been meaningless, could've been the end of things. He wishes he'd gotten up, thrown a "yeah" the way you throw an empty plate to a dog you want to kill only to walk away without a glance.

But things didn't go like they should have. They never go for him, if he's meant to be honest. Sure, it's on Cas that he sat so close, that their fully dressed knees touched and it was awkward in an inexplicable way. It's on him everything: and yet, Dean had betrayed Dean the most by pulling Cas's head until he had it resting surely on his arm and his thoughts and hands went stupid from there because, okay, so he did throw an and it's all your fault, Cas right back at him, but Dean supposes it doesn't quite count when sighed into Cas's mouth. So there, this one's on him entirely. Cas of course tried to be the white knight and protest cause woo, he's that into full service informed consent now, but gasping Dean's name in honest fear or honest pain either way doesn't make an impression on him anymore. He's been deaned this and deaned that by everyone for definitely far too long.

"I wish you were really evil," he whispers hoarsely, his hands steady on Cas's neck, not petting, not clutching, just there – whole ten fingers of need and desperation clearer than any words could possibly convey. "Why can't you be?" he begs, because that would make everything easier, he could give himself the order to kill, a dispense to hate wholeheartedly, wholly. But in all the murky in betweens, nothing is achievable, nothing is really permitted. Knowledge gives no freedom, it turns out. It's a new chain, a rusty one. The old one was gold. But all in all, as long as he's still bound, it makes no difference.

When Cas answers him mournfully, his tone leaves no space for doubts, for disputing. "Because you taught me what it means to be kind," he states with faith and certainty. "Your life taught me too much to seek evil."

"But it found you instead," Dean says, murmurs actually. "Look at you, look at us, Cas," he sighs. "There's so much dirt on your hands, on your mouth. None of it was necessary."

"Dirt," Cas muses, sounding hurt, but Dean elects not to hear that accusatory note. "Why would you eat this filth of my mouth, then? We can and we should stop," he insists.

Dean snorts bitterly somewhere into Cas's chest.

"You shaped me into this. Take responsibility," Dean demands stringently and is certain that this sounds way better than, say, because fuck you and because fuck me and also fuck everything that has a name. That would be equally true. But this is their last girly moment, so he's not gonna be the one to ruin it. Not deliberately.

"You shouldn't want that now," Cas tries to cut, but his attempt sounds weak. Dean knows Cas wants what Dean needs just as much.

"I don't want that. I don't want anything. I can't help that you've grown on me. Hell, I can't help you being so fucking stupid and disrespectful to my will for so many years," he spits only to laugh bitterly afterwards. "But this is what family does to family. It don't give a fuck about choices, it's blind cause it loves blindly. Maybe you're my punishment. I did the same for my brother, Cas. I didn't let him die even though he did."

"Am I your brother, Dean?" Cas asks, glint of hope coloring his voice.

"No," Dean says and he wants to be honest and clear. "You're my shallow grave. Gravel and soil mixing with my bones and flesh. Can't get you fucking out. Believe me, I tried. You're that. You're the last damn stop there is," he admits sourly.

"Then what do you need me to do?" Cas demands, Baikal so woefully and humanly flooded with tears and Dean isn't sorry for them, not at all. Cas can cry and cry and it won't make things clear, there will be no rainbow after the grand rains, no pact and forgiveness, no promises, no truce. All there is, is five senses and death. Maybe taxes.

"Cover me," he whispers, swallowing shame thickly. "Bury me within you, Cas," he asks. And Cas, his all-consuming open grave Cas, he so reluctantly (at first) delivers.

This is why Cas fills him now, all patient, gentle reverence. They sing each other's breaths, they give no more words and Dean thinks it's good like this. There's only thunders of moans unhidden by shame because Dean is bare bones and he can't hide at all. There's only slaps of skin against skin – deaf thuds of wet sand falling into the hole that is meant to be a grave, Dean's final resting and undoing. And Dean's unperturbed by that, he takes all, he yearns more kisses that are like candles and funeral wreaths filled with compassion, tenderness, unspoken pain roaring through them. He needs to turn into earth, has to do it completely to stop aching. For the first time, Dean feels, Cas doesn't fuck him. Cas makes love to him, finally. Now when he's already dead, dead, dead. He thinks again: he can fix this. Because he believes Cas can feel it in his now feeble, human bones that Dean is dead and lost to him, that his eyes will forever be too tired and too pale to flicker with life when he's looking at him, at the very least. Dean's too drained for that. He's too drained to hate like he should, too damn done for many other things. He floats, kind of empty. But that's exhausting too, because voids can hurt and burn as well. And he hates flying. He needs Cas the (former) comet to overwhelm and ground him with his touch, with his weight. So he hooks his anchor legs around Cas's shoulders, he lets himself be pinned and buried into the altar, into earth. Not only himself he allows to be gone and swallowed, but he buries Cas inside of him in exchange as well, a deliberate little revenge from beyond the grave – Dean watches him fall apart gracelessly above him and he sees that Cas too is devoid of freedom, is a prisoner of their bond. Dean's ruthlessly glad. He missed the warmth of a body and the hands that know everything too much. In between Cas's thrusts, he wonders what would happen if he cut Cas away (he'd die or he'd kill). Then again, he guesses he'll never try (because Cas would die or he'd kill and that's dangerous). Or maybe he will (sometimes he likes danger). He doesn't know. But Cas won't get to know that, either. Cas won't get to know a handful of things. Cas and he have a kid together, it seems. Its name is doubt. And it always, always will be with them, the little pride of their hearts and mouths. Because Dean's got a womb after all, and Cas isn't always right. In fact, most of the time, he's severely wrong.

When Dean comes, he's sure he's really dead. He's convinced he's exhaled the entirety of his twenty-one gram soul or whatever it is that people have these days. He's one with his shallow grave. His scabs no longer itch, and maybe taken care of like that, Dean dares to hope, they won't fester and will peacefully calm down into scars. At least his loins and mind stopped singing miserere. It's not good yet because doubt is a child that always cries and never sleeps, but it has to be enough. Sometimes there just isn't more.

II.

Cas keeps deaning him, probably something urgent, but he disregards that for the time being. He gestures at his invaders slash guests to come inside and follow him. For what it's worth, he's not gonna end or begin anything outside. It requires privacy, deserves to be settled within his intimate chambers, on his rules only. He takes the stairs down to the kind of conjugal room, keeps Cas close, hand ghosting in protection over Cas's spine in case anyone from the meddling kids right there felt like (rightfully so) mauling him open with a sledgehammer.

Without pride, but somehow also without a nick of embarrassment, Dean guides them all through decrepit hospital curtains and endless rows of rusty beds and doors, every now and then he turns around to catch a glimpse of despair in Sam's eyes. Yes, that's where he's been for the past years. Yes, the harsh patch of skin down Sam's spine was worth becoming all of this. He doesn't let himself look at his brother for too long, afraid that the love, once unleashed, could dull his senses, so he avoids Sammy's sad, sad gaze. He can't afford to look at it, at the unspoken but lingering accusation of what have you become?

A new animal, Dean thinks. And Dean thinks also – that's entirely his business and his alone. The point of Sam being alive was Sam having his own life and Dean having, well, his own this. He can feel the girl's eyes piercing him even more than his brother's and he just doesn't know the why. Not to mention the other chick. She looks through him as if she knew things. Which is not a cool thing, Dean's insides considering. Somehow he feels he should find about all of that first.

"You can all sit down," he announces as he leads them into the right room. "On whatever space you see fit. Didn't quite find the time to drop by at Sears, so these rusty fucks," he points at the bed frames and bed stands, "will have to do," he adds, hoping nobody besides him will choose to sit down on the one and only fully operational bed because he's almost sure it's not pristine clean. It's not like he and Cas have regular laundry days. So yeah, in the end only the two of them decide to place their asses down on the rumpled sheets.

"Dean," Cas tries again, for whatever reason seeing an opening where there is none.

"Cas, can't that fucking wait," he sighs. "There's shit to do. Like getting to know these people. I only recognize the nerd," he adds and watches Sam fail to decide whether he should smile or frown. "So," he begins, but Cas interrupts him rudely. Then again, Cas does many things rudely – like he does him, like he does, undoes and redoes the insides of his brain.

"I know them," he states. "This is Jim's daughter. And Lucifer."

"Huh," Dean comments, appalled. "I don't even know to which to react first." Because he really, really doesn't. He's not sure what he expected in particular, but it certainly wasn't Sam taking his future demise for a free ride. Cas's vessel being a family man? That never even entered the fucking suburbs of his thoughts.

"Throw a nickel," Sam suggests, frustrated. "And decide."

"There's an idea you just gave me," Dean frowns in the universal sign of oh well. "Sam," he asks sharply, "why is there Lucifer here and why Jimmy's child that Cas, interestingly enough, you somehow never informed me about him having?" he groans in irritation directed at idiot one and idiot two. If he had money to bet, he'd put all on the assumption that right now, he's a proud owner of the exasperated teacher face.

"They're both here to kill him. "Especially Lucifer."

As Sam says this, the older of the women walks close to him and puts her smooth palm on his arm, disturbingly close to his neck to give a subtle display of affection. Her gaze follows suit, all Sams, all tender longings and reassuring I'm here for yous. It's so alarming it makes Dean and at least seven things inside of him cringe in disgust, and yet, that's not the feeling that takes over him whole. He's furious. And if he digs deep enough, he knows that he's jealous, too. The woman seems to know it as well, her eyes flicker onto him for a moment and there's clear dare in the sharpness of her gaze.

"No one's dying today," Dean states firmly. "You're in deep shit trouble, kid," he barks, doesn't know to which of these two at this point. In fact, the only person here he isn't pissed on yet is the Novak girl, but knowing his luck, Dean presumes it's merely a matter of yet.

"How can you say that, Dean?" Sam wails offended with his plan not being taken into proper consideration, which is probably a scandal in his mind. "Just look at you, look at what he's done to you," accusatory voice of his informs of yet another scandal. Okay.

And that's the first rock to be thrown at him, alright. What Sam doesn't know is that this little pebble has started an avalanche. He doesn't know many things, apparently. Oh, but Dean will fill him in on that. He's so furious he might be even capable of spitting some truths, which, well, is about the damn time.

"Yeah, look at me, Sammy," he starts calmly, drags his voice carefully over the concrete façade of mind peace. He's doing it for his own satisfaction as Sam knows him well enough to know that the calmer he sounds, the more furious and burning he is beneath. And right now, Dean is layers and layers of smoke that will taint the air with don't you dares when Dean finally will let it out. And he will. In a moment. "You pity what you see, huh? I know you do, I know your face best. Do you perhaps wanna know why this," he says, gesturing at himself and Cas with subtle disgust, "happened?"

He watches his brother swallow nervously and he might even feel a drop of satisfaction at the back of his throat, where more words still wait to get out. He spares a short glance at Cas – he seems kind of hurt about being referred to as a thing that happened. But hey, he's just being honest here. He's wondering which one of them will dean him first this time, but neither dares to speak. How considerate. So he goes on because he can. And that's a wonderful, liberating reason, after all. "To keep Satan away from you," he says through gritted teeth. "Me living, me dying, me being so wonderfully and thoughtfully safe for six years," he spits with resentment and knows that Cas shudders slightly behind him. "I did and gave everything away to protect you from this outcome. I gave you away from myself to spare you from being eaten and scorched by the devil. And you come here with him perking on your shoulder, slapping me in the face with my own sacrifice, Sam. Not cool."

"Dean," Sam tries brokenly, losing the deaning-game first, "I've been looking for you for all this time, don't you dare think I wouldn't make a sacrifice for you either," he adds and Dean cuts the bullshit short, he's not gonna let him have the martyrdom here.

"You know what it feels like?" he muses. "It's exactly like when I kept giving and giving and giving and here comes the night when you inform me you're moving to Palo Alto. And the day I help you pack your shit and drive you to the station, when I walk you right to that bus. And you say nothing to me except my fucking name, because the only other thing you were fit to give me was a cheerful bye-bye, that happy to leave you were. Could've at least said you're sorry. I don't know, that you're grateful. But you weren't. Sam, I'm officially out of cheeks to slap me on."

"Dean, you're crazy," Sam comments, staring at him in terror. As if he didn't recognize him at all. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he had these cooler and nicer ideas of what Dean is and what isn't. And yeah, about that mistake he should really shake a hand with Cas.

"For fucking once I'm not," Dean chuckles bitterly, makes sure for his harsh voice to manifest the finality of the truth. "I always wanted you to have a life. Thought you wanted one, too. I gave you a chance for that. Six years, Sam, if I count right, you could have been a lawyer right now. You could be whatever the fuck you liked. You knew I was going to die and I begged you to let go and to live. But you of course had to turn into Dad," he comments bitterly. "And what, Cas is your yellow-eyes now and you're willing to give yourself to queen bitch here to wipe him off the map? What do you think that will give you? Cause it's sure not gonna give me anything. I'll deal with him myself. This isn't your war," Dean insists, "it never should've been."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Make the sacrifice," Dean sneers. "As in, don't make any. Drive back to Bobby's, take the little girl-"

"I'm not a little girl, I'm eighteen," Claire interjects, irritated. Dean smiles for the first time today as he clears his throat. "And I can take care of myself," she insists.

"Take the not little girl who can take care of herself somewhere safe. Get your ass a home, get a cool chick that likes to fuck rough and hopefully isn't a monster. Drop your revenge. Don't wanna do it for yourself? Fine, do it just for me."

"If you promise me to come along."

"I'm not in the position to promise you anything and you're not in the place to demand that."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"I'm gonna figure things out for myself. Here's as good as anywhere. I just need to get some asswipes off this ride so they wouldn't interrupt that."

"You're trying to kill two archangels on your own and you think I won't stop you?" Sam shouts, incensed to no end. "Are you fucking trying to kill yourself here, Dean?!"

"No, but that wouldn't be anything new," he says, winks at Cas and delights himself with the sight of him hopelessly curling his hands into fists.

"No," Sam states.

Dean scoffs. "Where was no in your vocabulary when you were saying yes to the devil?"

"I haven't said it."

"Oh, yes you have. The pretty lady is just fooling around with you right now. She's gonna condom you nice and thick, cause to be honest, it ain't even really you she's here for," Dean explains, smiling at Sam sourly. He lets his face fall into unreadable poker nothing as he turns to speak to Lucifer instead. "It's about time we talk," he says somberly. Somewhere in the room, Claire whispers a terrified jesus christ. Dean remembers there's still some important stuff he needs to take care of. "Cas? Could you?"

Cas doesn't say a thing, he just walks towards Sam and the girl so apparently he could. He puts a hand on their foreheads to shut them down into sleep. Not like they're a threat or anything, but Dean supposes having the two of them left to their own devices with Cas would be very high above the bearable level of awkward. Because those could be very strange and unpleasant devices. Sam? Sam could fuss around but he'd drop it once he probably realizes Cas still lays on the lower borders of ungankable. It's Cas's sans Cas's ergo Jimmy's kid he's worrying about. Staring at someone with her dad's face, something that even if on some intellectual level recognizes her, but all in all, doesn't love her can't possibly be a pleasant experience. Not to mention that the thing is banging some other dude now. Good she doesn't know that one. Too bad the thing itself forgot to mention the whole family issue somewhere in between, say, a good four years of dick-cowboying. Cause it's somehow so easy to forget, having an infinite memory, really. A great fuck you award goes to Cas for that one if Dean lives long enough to deliver it.

He gestures at Lucifer and they walk out of the room. Stopping in the doorway, he glances at Claire, at Cas, and says, "I hope you know you got some explaining to do and that I'm not going to be nice."

"As long as you come back, I'm fine with that," Cas offers him a tiny smile.

Coming back. Right, he probably should do that. He nods absentmindedly. Dean looks at Sam again, allows wistful fondness to crawl up his face now that his brother is brittle and asleep and safe (he will be, soon, Dean reminds himself).

"Goodnight, Sammy," he sighs with heavy relief. He's got no idea what else he could or should say, so he's glad Sam doesn't hear him. No time to think about it, though. They pass the threshold and the door shuts behind them with morbid finality. As he and Satan walk the hall without speaking, Dean delves into his thoughts and he's glad he heard Sam's voice, glad he saw his dimples, glad he saw Cas's smile. Despite the anger, he's just glad. That's good enough to hang onto. Used to be enough to have him make bigger sacrifices, after all.

III.

Dean opens his eyes, feels sharp and heavy with the universe and its weight, breathes air in with such hunger as if he was drowning and drowning for ages. It reeks of rotten eggs, of sulfur. His sight comes into focus, hot white light slowly giving place for shapes and colors. He sees his mother looming above him in the orange warmths. He swiftly punches her in the dick (alright, face, he punches her in the face cause it was considerably closer). It's not his mother. He sits down on the metal rack and waits, his eyes screaming bloody murder.

"My mother's dead," Dean snarls. "And she always wore her jewelry on the other hand."

The thing that isn't Mary looks at its hand and offers him an embarrassed smile. "My apologies, baby," she says with her voice and no, Dean can't agree on whatever this particular shit is to go on. He thinks maybe he's in Hell after all, maybe everything that just poured right into his mind is nothing more but a part of the torture. At least there'd be no asshole Cas to hide and deceive, but he takes a controlling glance on his hand and learns it's still useless. So no, Hell or not Hell, that Cas part still happened. He hasn't fully processed that yet, but he's going to. Later. "What are you?" he demands, because at the moment, that's the most important problem.

"I raised you from perdition," he hears.

"I'm sure I've already heard that once," he comments, bored.

"This time you're not being lied to, Dean," is the instant answer and it stings. "I've shown you everything. I'm the one who made you see what was hidden from you."

"Yes," Dean agrees flatly, "I've noticed," he says and it nods, pleased with itself. Whoa, whoa, whoa, no. Nothing to be so pleased with. Dean tries to elaborate just in case his current problem is a fucking idiot. "I understand your true face is somewhere beyond the general vicinity of everything?"

"I wouldn't risk your beautiful eyes for the fleeting pleasure of experiencing my visage."

"Experiencing your visage?" Dean mocks in disbelief.

"You've never seen Castiel before. And I am much, much more than him."

Seen his dick and that's a lot, Dean wants to joke, but doesn't because there's no time for this, "More of what – a douche bag?" he asks the more useful question instead.

"More of an angel," it explains. "I'm Michael. And I'm the one destined to hold you. I'm here to give you peace."

Dean cringes, because that just sounds like a whole fucking barn of wrong.

"You sure sound like you're here to give me crap," he barks. "Cas warned me about you. I don't care what he's selling, but you, you're wearing my mom. Bitch, I don't like you," Dean says. "People tend not to like that," he whispers theatrically, "when other people wear their dead moms. It's a faux pas, dude."

"I only wanted to make a pleasant acquaintance," Michael says, voice changed – form shaped into something he recognizes too well. Dean turns around and sees himself: his lean, lithe sixteen year old ephebic body, looking at him through a pair of green, smart eyes and at least fifty other pairs – yellow and beastlike, measuring and swallowing him from a pair of stunning red wings which sprung from his younger self's back and crown above it as a peacock tail. "But if you ask, this is a taste of honesty, of your destiny. Or, at least as much as your mind can handle."

"You taste like shit," Dean spits.

"You're almost as charming as broken," Michael smiles, shooting a meaningful glance at Dean's palm. "Such wonderful precautions he took here, Castiel dear. If I taste like shit, I wonder how he tastes to you now. So much pain and such a terrible loss of usefulness and durability only so you wouldn't handle one damn sword. He's got to love you a lot," he hums, looking at Dean with the clever, but faithful way he remembers looking at Sonny back in 1995.

"A sword?" Dean repeats, shaken. He's just been given an entirely different word of revelation. He's not gonna share with the class, though.

"Didn't he read the word to you? Have you never seen any pieces of art? Sweet little child, it was foreseen that I will cut down the head of the Serpent. Abraham was born and your mother was born and cried through her labor just so the world could gift you with this perfect arm, fingers and a thumb worth more than whole galaxies. There was no other hand like yours, Dean. Not even your father's. Your hand was made to bring justice, serve love, deliver punishment. So seasoned in its purpose it was the only one that could wield the holy sword."

"Right," Dean agrees rather weakly, thinking about other things: about Cas not actually slaughtering his tiny bones to take revenge upon a one foolishly signed letter. The realization alters his thoughts, but he's not sure if it's going to change anything. "That it?"

"I don't mean to pry," the archangel smiles too sweetly with his stolen face, "but what else do you think it could be?"

"You do mean to pry," Dean growls. "What do you think I'm going to tell you other than to fuck off?"

"You think he betrayed you," Michael muses. "That's alright. He hurt you, that's true. I can help you make him pay for it. I will give you all the help you need to cut him open," he assures, walking closer towards Dean, taking both of his palms into his, carefully wrapping a silver blade into them. "I will give you all."

The moment Dean fully grasps the weapon, he lashes out at the angel, stabs him in the chest with all the force he can manage. "You rotten piece of shit," he hisses. "You're worse than all of them. I'm not gonna help you kill your own blood, no matter how much beef you got with them."

"You've already helped me a lot, righteous man," Michael proceeds to infuriate Dean with an enigmatic smile and of course, he has to be absolutely cheerful about the piece of metal peeking out of his chest like a spring flower. "But I need to let you know. I don't have beef. I merely follow my father's will. It's written in my name to do. I don't hate, not even the Serpent. You misjudge me."

"Is your name dumb fuck idiot perhaps?"

"My name, Dean, means: who is like God? My name is the question that can't be answered. This is why I do what I do. Nobody is the only answer. So I am made to be nobody but my father's hand"

"I'll answer that," Dean says with full seriousness. "It took a while but I figured it out." Michael brightens up in focus as a curious fox seeking noises of the hounds. "I'll tell you what is like God."

"Speak," the archangel demands, charming voice fallen serious all out the sudden.

"Family," Dean tells him with certainty.

"Speak more."

And Dean does. About how his father was God, but a bad one, how he was a God too much but not a father enough; how he told him to kill the son that was really Dean's; how Dean had said no for the first time and how proud he was of both of them with just watching Sam live; how his brother's smallest smiles, but also his frowns and their livid fights made it worth it – because it was still better to have that: the anger, the fury, the bitter tears of hopelessness than to have nothing. How the God somehow never returned to scold him just like he never returned to save him just for the sake of it. God only cares about his own devices and sharp-stoned roads, Dean tells Michael, and he listens. And it doesn't matter if his name is John or Yahweh or Cindy or whatever. That's why the rest of the family needs and loves each other: because they were made and then abandoned, he explains cause he knows how it rolls. "What do you want?" he tries. "Do you really want to kill your brother?" he asks because he knows the answer.

"I can't want," Michael tells him, something close to begging piercing through his voice: pain of unfulfilled necessity.

"Maybe you got it wrong. Maybe your name isn't a question. It's a statement."

"What do you mean?"

"Michael, who is like God," Dean explains. "Michael, who makes his rules. You already bent them for me. You took me to Hell, I thought it was a no-no."

"You're an exception," Michael smiles.

"Make yourself an exception," Dean counters. "If you don't know how to want, then give yourself what you need. You know how it is to need, don't you?"

"I need you," he says firmly. "For this."

"I know. I can make that happen for you if you promise me something."

"If I can promise you whatever it is that you wish, I will deliver."

"Don't you dare raise your hand on your brother. I'm not gonna help you with that."

"Is this your yes?" Michael asks and Dean nods. "For peace?"

"I want you to let me go once you're settled with your affairs. Just have your boo stay away from my brother and get Lucy's angry demonic groupies lock down there. All of 'em."

"Dean, you do realize that containing me will scorch your cells into nothing? I'm infinite. As long as I am hidden within you, I'm hidden. Once I manifest and spread, there will be no return. I can give you peaceful sleep buried under my grace. You won't feel a thing."

"I'm done sleeping on somebody else's rules. If I gotta go, I go how I want to go," Dean insists. "I've died bloody so many times I think I can manage the last one."

"This isn't necessary for you to bear, you don't have to suffer, Dean."

"Doesn't matter, it saves lives," Dean smiles. "And for the first fucking time I can actually choose how things end, in a hunter's life that's a privilege."

"I don't want to have you go through this, but if this is your decision, I can't take that away from you. It's stupid, though," Michael tries fondly.

"You're stupid."

"What about Castiel?"

"He's also stupid. But my family stupid. You don't get to lay a hand on him, either. I'm the only one who can punish him."

"Do you want to?"

"Let's welcome him to not knowing. Starting now."

All falls white and white and white. Dean wakes up and finds himself back in the chapel. He finds himself also vehemently hating the fact that Cas didn't mess with his limbs for vile and perverted purposes. Believing that made hate so much thicker and easier, so more natural and just. It was clean and shining and good. It was almost pleasant to hate. Knowing gave him confusion instead of clarity. He doesn't care what most of priests would say. Dying while hating would be so much more convenient than dying when loving, especially if that's a love contorted broken and ill. Well, Dean thinks, shit. He calls Cas. They're not done talking.

IV.

Dean opens the door again, his insides still buzzing feverishly, still heavy with the raw force of archangel and archangel emotions. His flesh, his fucking entity is already beginning to ache so much it makes him want to puke all that holy pain and holy love out. There was too much wires of sainthood cutting into him, there was a sun shoved down his throat and he despite his best efforts, couldn't really swallow. He tries to focus his tired eyes on the new, quite unexpected sight before him. Cas's sitting next to the sleeping teen, carefully lets her father's palm sweep through her golden hair (and they look beautiful, Dean manages to think through the thousands of paper-cuts slicing his brain. They must have been a beautiful family). Hearing the door creak, Cas lifts his head from his vessel's only child and offers a questioning look to Dean.

"What you doin?" he asks instead of answering Cas's unspoken what happeneds. Cas is a citizen of not knowing. That's better.

"I'm sorry for her," he says simply.

"Yeah, you should be."

"I wasn't thinking. I wanted to have Claire avoid her mother's fate. Demons already waited within Amelia's body, but she, she could be saved," Cas murmurs. "But I didn't think beyond that. Didn't care what would happen to her later," he adds, sounding guilty. "I was only thinking about you then. I was in a hurry."

"Well," Dean sighs, "now you've got time to fix this. If it's still possible to fix."

"Is it?" Cas asks, his tone telling Dean that he really wants to know and wants to fix.

"I don't know," Dean admits. "It's her choice, not ours."

"Ours," Cas echoes curiously as if that mattered. Dean shrugs. It doesn't anymore. Mattering requires time, which is yet another luxury good Dean doesn't have as he chose to trade it for freedom.

"Not mine and not yours," he clarifies. "But we put her into this mess. We should keep her safe until she licks herself outta this. If she does, that is."

"This isn't going to be healthy for her."

"Look around, Cas," Dean groans tiredly. "Nothing here is healthy. We aren't healthy and yet you're determined to keep us going."

"Are you?"

"I don't know. I'll let you know when I do. Right now I need to think. I need space. I need the open. I need my damn car."

"So you're going back with Sam?'

"I'm pretty positive I said space and open. I'm glad to know he's fine. But he needs to breathe, too. He should rest, those years have been heavy on him. Maybe if he knows I'm alive and well, he'll find the time to figure shit out for himself, too. Demons won't be bothering us anymore. I can take the lesser hunts alone. Easy," Dean lies. So damn relieved it came so simple to spit out straight into Cas's eyes.

"You don't have to hunt either."

"But I want to."

"You could use a hand, though," Cas suggests.

Dean shakes his head. "You're not coming with me. Not now," he smiles weakly. "I gotta try being free. Having you around, Cas, I just keep bending and bending. I can't be yours, that's just too much," he sighs. "I wanna be with you and that's different. We're not ready for that. You don't know what you are, either. You gotta see that for yourself," Dean adds, softer, walks closer to Claire, to Cas. Sits down and puts his palm on Cas's cheek, kisses the corner of his mouth. There's no spark to the touch of his lips. There's remorse. There's a story written all over that kiss and it starts with the inevitable I wish the circumstances were different or at least that this would never start. He sees the sad awareness fall on the angel's face. Cas of course did notice Dean's hand is as good as new. Both of them must feel it in their bones that this is goodbye because they're too weak and too mortal to make themselves into what they need to be to make things right. "I can't be your purpose anymore, you understand? That's not gonna work."

Dean's been everything for so long he just wants to be Dean. Being someone's reason to keep on breathing doesn't seem to lie well on him. It's rather uncomfortable. He can't promise they're able to change that much. Or simply change enough to make them work and not eat each other in all the wrong ways. As for himself, he can't promise the next sunrise. He needs to go. And Cas needs not to know any of that.

"I understand," Cas says flatly.

Dean huffs bitterly. "Right now you only say you do, but at least for that in particular, I don't blame you. Upstairs owe me a favor, so if you ever fancied coming back to Heaven, you're free to go. They won't hunt you down. In fact, they're celebrating. You should go."

In fact also, Dean wishes he'd go. That's the only place where they have a chance of meeting again.

"Celebrating what?"

"Reunion."

"You did this? You reconciled them?"

"Told you I'm a specialist on family crap. I'm the arch-doctor Phil Oprah of family crap."

"How?"

"See, and that's the problem. It's done, so it shouldn't matter to you."

"So what are you going to do now, Dean?"

"I'll take the girl back home. The other one didn't make it, Lucy is an asshole to his vessels. I don't even wanna know what Michael sees in that bitch. Listen," Dean gets serious, urgency of his forthcoming words painted ominously all over his face (which at this point hurts based merely on the grounds of it existing). "I need you to take Sam to Bobby's. Tell him you're a hunter friend he called in for help. Then return home – see if those winged-monkeys behave. Keep them in line, say I officially anointed you for the job or whatever."

"What if I want to wait for you?"

"Wait up there," Dean shrugs. "That's probably gonna be dog years for you, anyway. Hey, come here," he says and pulls Castiel into a soft embrace. No nuzzling, no kissing, even though it does tempt a little (but not enough to follow through). He touches the angel's wings and heals them back to their old glory. He marvels on them, glad he can see them in their greatness with all the residual juice he's going on. They are plain and simple – black and white, just like a stork's, but there's indisputable beauty to their modesty.

"Dean," Cas gasps, both terrified and amazed.

"Consider this a welcome-back gift from a friend upstairs," Dean lies swiftly once more. He'd have more time left if he hadn't spent the leftovers of Michael's grace on this, but he doesn't mind. He wouldn't even know what to do with more time. "Work the plan and maybe we'll see each other again."

Dean lifts Claire with visible effort and cradling her, he walks out of the bedroom. He hears the rustle of wings again and he knows Cas did what he was asked to do. He turns his head around just in case and confirms that Sam is also gone. At least this went as planned, he thinks. He carries the girl into the car, starts the engine, and maybe after a good five minutes of such a wonderful and long missed drive in his baby, he decides to wake the little blonde fire-ball up with a soft touch on her face.

As she wakes up, she stares at him wistfully because she can probably feel the truth, she knows.

"I want to come with you," she tells him flatly. "I have people waiting for me, too."

He doesn't quite agree, but he understands, so he doesn't play hypocrite. He nods.

"You're lucky I'm gonna be dead either way," he elects to say. "Otherwise your mom and dad would kill me for letting you do this."

"Our lucky day, then," Claire shrugs.

"Anything you wanna try?" he asks, the only courteous thing he can offer in this situation.

"A good burger would be great."

"You read my mind I think," Dean smiles. "Does your inner super-computer think I could handle another six hours?"

"If you grit your pretty teeth and try hard enough, you got a chance. Why?"

"There's this diner," Dean chuckles. "Best in whole Missouri. Worth dying for. Worth the drive, too."

"Deal."

So Dean chuckles again, puts on good old Bon Jovi, and while they're livin on a prayer, they just drive. They're halfway there.

V.

When Sam opens his eyes, with a pained and gloomy face Bobby shows him a Riverfront Times article about a '67 Chevy Impala inexplicably driving off the Poplar Street Bridge on full speed. Sam calls his brother a stupid piece of shit and hides his face in his hands to cry. No demon comes to make a deal, though Sam tries.

Dean open his eyes again, he sees Mary. Only this damn time, it's really her. She's got tears in her eyes, although that's understandable, considering the circumstances. But the design was grand, heaven will have to admit – his sixty seven child went to rest below a sixty seven bridge. He knows it's foolish but he still hopes Mississippi will be kind to her. He hopes he won't be taken out, so his body could stay with her to keep vigil. He's a shy bit proud of that one move, in a crippled way he'd dare to see it as metaphorical: life crawled out of the water, so death is a return back into it or whatever. So, yeah, sue him if this is non sequitur, but then again, that's the case with most of his courses of deduction and reaction, especially those regarding Cas, which is very unfortunate, because p is never q and most of the time, cold is hot. Speaking of the devil, Cas is there waiting for him, too (lookin good and lookin angry, Dean notices). He punches Dean straight in the face. But then he hugs him and kisses his forehead lovingly right in front of his mother and Dean is embarrassed like a teenager. He takes it as a very sublime form of punishment on Cas's part. Why not. But he frees himself from the embrace and begins to walk away. There's a nice bar in his Heaven and he really needs to go there. Cas follows him, few steps behind. Dean's not gonna stop him. In his Heaven, everyone is free and everyone gets to try. In his Heaven also, Dean can say fuck off whenever he likes.

Claire gets to finish that diner with her parents. Her father doesn't stutter a single word about God. No one in fact talks about him in Heaven anymore. She mentions the Conner's Diner burgers instead. They really were that good. They took them both heavy into the water, after all. Fed them with what they needed. Well, most of the things they needed. But there is a bar at Dean's Heaven and there, Claire doesn't have to be twenty-one to drink. She's never going to be that old, anyway.