Title: Descending
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Castiel, Dean Winchester
Prompt: Destiel Writers and Readers (January 2017) Quotations Challenge. Week 2: "Paint me a heaven of love with your bloodied mouth." – Federico Garcia
Word Count: 536
Rating: T
Genre: Angst
Summary: This wasn't Dean… This was someone else… And he steadfastly refused to stand by and watch.
Author's Notes: Episode Tags: 10.22 "The Prisoner", 8.02 "What's Up, Tiger Mommy?", 8.17 "Goodbye Stranger"
Disclaimer: I own nothing …


"I don't want to have to hurt you."

"I don't think that's gonna be a problem."

This wasn't Dean… not his Dean at any rate. This wasn't even the miserable, masticated soul he'd found and rescued in that dank and festering pit in Hell nearly seven years ago and had had to stitch back together with his own grace. This was someone else… something else.

He couldn't just let it leave the confines of the bunker.

He knew he was right when he'd said that Dean would murder the world. With that brand burning into his arm with the darkest energy Castiel had ever come across sucking the humanity out of his very soul, and every last shred of a conscious out of his mind, Dean would become an even worse version of himself than he had ever had before. The last time Dean had become a demon honestly wasn't all that bad compared to what Castiel could see the hunter swiftly transforming into at an alarming rate. And he steadfastly refused to stand by and watch.

So he tried.

He tried to keep Dean inside the bunker. Tried to keep him inside his own mind. Tried to keep Dean with him…

But as the blows came… one… after another… after another… he tried. Tried to reach out to the last part of his Dean that he knew was still in there. Somewhere.

Castiel fought back but was unwilling to truly harm his friend. Dean was right. They were all right. He cared too much… loved too much… he had too much heart, which had supposedly always caused a multitude of problems over the eons of existence. Besides, he had probably earned it for all the times he'd betrayed his friends, himself, and his family. The last of which had cast him out for how much of a failure and disappointment he'd become and how far he'd fallen from his purpose.

Ignoring all that, Castiel couldn't say that Dean wasn't actually justified in his current actions. It was his turn, after all. Payback for when they'd managed to locate the Angel Tablet. Dean had forgiven him for that, seeing as how he'd been brainwashed by Naomi, but the guilt of that particular time still weighed on Castiel's conscience.

So he tried to fight back just enough to get Dean to see reason, failing that to see sense. But the hits just kept coming. Fuelled unnaturally by the power of the mark. Dean's inhuman strength was the most telling aspect of this terrible affliction he'd taken upon himself. It showed just how far gone the hunter was… just how close Castiel was to truly losing him.

But he didn't care.

He would try to get through to Dean if it took expending every ounce of his weakened and fading grace, if it took his last breath…

And so, as Dean physically threw his broken body to the floor and flipped him onto his back, as blood from his vessel's internal bleeding pooled in his throat, choking him, and dripping thickly past his lips, as Dean held Castiel's own angel blade in his hand ready to strike, he reached out…

"N-… no, Dean… please…"

*Father, please… help Dean…*

- 30 -


Completed: January 15, 2017