This story takes place in an ambiguous timeline sometime after the season 11 finale, after Sam has returned, and when some semblance of normality is achieved with the characters and their respective story-lines. As we all know, as far as the writers and Bob Singer is concerned, that this will never happen. I'm going to go ahead and call this a divergence from canon and an AU from some point in season 12 that may or may not ever happen.
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel, Rowena, Crowley, and Mary
I'm notorious for not finishing stories. For those with a phobia of being left hanging either pester the hell out of me if you're enjoying the story or schedule a lamenting. I apologize ahead of time. Accept cookies on my behalf. I'll pay you back.
Dean had received the text around midnight and had woken up Sam from the next room. They both decided not to wake Mary, their mother. Instead, like good little boys, they left a post-it note where she could find it. Mary had not yet mastered the details of technology so physical notes worked much better than online notifications or text messages.
Together they traced the GPS on the phone it had originated to pinpoint the location. Later they would realize what a miracle it was to be able to do so after seeing the phone's state.
Unsurprisingly, the location was an abandoned warehouse. All bad shit tended to go down in warehouses. It wasn't all that far from the Men of Letters bunker either. This wasn't surprising considering Castiel didn't tend to stray far from the bunker on his nightly walks. Being an angel and not sleeping tended to inspire some restlessness, especially with still being grounded by lack of flight. Cas hadn't really talked about it, but they were all aware he wasn't currently able to transport anywhere. The reason was unclear.
Cas' message read, in swiftly typed text that was very uncharacteristic of the angel:
"ned help cme quik"
After Sam had traced the phone, Dean having attempted several times to call and text with no response, they wasted no time in arming to the gills with weaponry and taking off to find their friend.
When they arrived at what could have been any large, abandoned warehouse in any small industrial park they wasted no time sprinting to the doors and all but kicking them in.
Their forms were silhouetted by the street lamp light shining through the door-frame, edges of weapons cutting into the rounded and broad statures of the brothers; they paused for a second to take in the scene.
A flash of red hair shifted to Rowena's enigmatic eyes widening in their presence.
"Shit," she murmured as she caught sight of the two.
But more worrisome than the presence of a very powerful witch was the book she was reading out of, The Book of the Damned. And if that didn't create enough worry the circle of fire surrounding a kneeling Castiel, his face contorted in tightly controlled agony, and the near-white glow coming from his torso showing through his shirt, suit, and coat was a catalyst in and of itself for Dean to stalk right up, unhesitating, to Rowena as she spat the ancient words of some
God-forsaken (literally) spell and point a gun to her head and shoot.
And the only reason Dean had been the one to shoot Rowena was because he acted faster than Sam. Sam watched the scene with tightly coiled energy. To both he and Dean's disappointment, Rowena's form dissipated. Her image was a trick, they both realized. And, also, (not having time to think of the whys or hows) Castiel was still in danger.
The brothers sprinted to the angel trap and batted the flames with their feet.
"Cas? Cas!" Dean exclaimed as he knelt in front of the angel and propped up his friend's head with his hand to get a better look at the pallid and pained face. "How're ya doin' buddy?"
Cas' grimace gave a sharp, incredulous twist as he squinted his eyes and furrowed his brows, his body flinching with the white-hot pain that erupted through his abdomen and up to his shoulders and neck.
"Really?" he squeezed out with a turn of his head into Dean's hand.
Sam was beside him too, now, also on his knees after patting out some of the excess fire from the holy oil. Dean had the decency to look sheepish in Cas' response.
"Hey," Sam said, reticent on touching the angel's glowing form. "Hey, what happened? What's this doing to you? How do we stop it?"
Dean let go of Cas' head when he realized he was holding his own for the moment.
At Sam's question Castiel's face changed from struggling pain to a hint of lost desperation.
"I don't know, Sam," he wheezed. "I don't know what she did to me. I've...never felt this," he grunted, "I don't know what's happening."
Sam looked to Dean with worried eyes. Dean shared the expression before turning back to Cas.
"O-okay. We'll figure it out, okay? H-how are ya feelin' now? I mean-" Dean quickly amended, holding up his hands, "I know it's not good. But are ya stable, at least? Can we move ya?"
"Yeah," Sam chimed in swallowing past his worry, "We can get you back to the bunker. Figure out how to stop this...this whatever it is."
Castiel panted and then shook his head.
"I feel as though I'm being incinerated from the inside out," he struggled to push out. "You should leave. If...if my grace...I will hurt you."
"We ain't going anywhere, pal," Dean said. "It's like Sam said. We're gonna take you to the bunker...get you fixed up or-or stopped at least. No way I'm gonna let you get blown up by that witch bitch."
At this point Dean, as well as Sam, had each taken one of Castiel's hands to steady him. Cas was sweating so much that his hair was stuck to his forehead and rivulets of sweat were dripping down his neck off of the brunette ringlets.
Sam cast a worried glance at Dean. Dean returned it with a glare that said, 'you can leave if you want but I'm staying'.
"Dean's right," Sam finally decided. "You've saved us too many times for us to not try and return the favor."
Cas swallowed as he threw reluctance into his myriad of expressions looking from Sam and back to Dean.
"I don't think you understa-AAAAAAAH!" Cas suddenly screamed. "GAAAAAAAAAH!" His teeth bared as his hands tightened to the brothers and his eyes widened as his breath huffed roughly through his lips.
"Cas?" Dean said, putting another hand on the brunette's elbow. "Hey, hey, stay with us, man. Sam!"
Sam shook his head, "I don't know, Dean; I don't know what's happening to him! Maybe...maybe he is exploding. Look at his torso! That's his grace; it's gotta be. I don't know what we can do. Maybe...here..."
Cas was pliable in their hands now, slumping with harsh breathing and stoned from pain. Sam started taking the angel's trench off as Dean held him propped between them.
"Maybe," Sam continued, "she put some kind of hex bag on him. I dunno."
Dean nodded and helped undress their friend. Castiel tiredly let them do so, not having the energy or focus to question their actions. Neither was even sure Castiel was fully aware after his exclamation of pain. All the while he was panting as if he was running a marathon and as Dean grazed his neck his pulse felt fluttering, faster than was humanly possible.
The light from within Cas illuminated his skin and bones from the inside out. The brothers were having to squint to study his chest and back, seeing if anything was evident. His clothes had contained nothing.
Suddenly Castiel's head shot up and his eyes widened so that his irises were in puddles of round whiteness. He locked eyes with Dean.
"Go..." he croaked. And then, "GOOOOO!"
He stood up with energy he shouldn't have had and pushed them both away, clenching his fists.
"No!" Dean yelled as Sam took him bodily behind a support beam as the light from Castiel's body reached unbearable levels. They ducked down at Castiel's sharp scream and then at Castiel's real voice breaking through his vessel. They could hear, feel, his voice even through their hands clapping onto their ears.
This is the sound of an angel screaming in agony, Dean thought through closed eyes and covered ears.
Lights shattered and darkened. Windows exploded. Electricity rained down from busted power lines exploding in their attempts to contain the energy exemplified by Castiel's true voice.
And then it was dark. The street lamps from outside the window created an eerie glow as Sam and Dean rose from their crouched positions behind the column.
"Cas..." Dean whispered seeing the slumped form piled on the floor in the middle of the charred remains of the holy oil circle.
It was too dark to see if there was also the ash outline of wings behind him. It was too dark to tell if their friend was dead. This, of course, gave them both hope that maybe, somehow, he had survived whatever Rowena had done.
They approached him tentatively as if waiting for him to suddenly jump up. Sam was the first to notice.
"Dean, he's breathing!" he said in hushed excitement and their approach to his form was faster.
Both grabbed the front of each shoulder and propped him up from his forward slump.
"Hey, Cas," Sam prodded gently.
The only way they knew Cas' eyes had opened in the shadow was the glimmer of blue they reflected and the way the light shifted as he looked from one brother to the next.
"I'm still here," Cas slurred hoarsely with confusion and surprise.
"Damn right you are!" Dean exclaimed, his teeth shining as he grinned.
"Cas, how do you feel?" Sam interjected, concerned.
It took Cas a few breaths to answer, "Terrible." A few more breaths and then, "I...hurt."
Dean swallowed sharing a glance with Sam.
"Hey, Sam," Dean said roughly, "you think there's a breaker box around here? Maybe we could get some of these lights back on, ones that aren't busted. See what we're dealing with?"
"Uh, yeah. Yeah, on it," Sam nodded distractedly letting Dean shoulder Cas' weight as he got up to look around in the most common places for an electrical box. He turned on his phone and used the flashlight app to find his way around.
Dean did the same thing but shined it on Cas so he could examine his face and torso.
"Hey, hey. You're still here, right? That's a good thing," Dean said, trying to be motivating.
Castiel, who was having trouble keeping his head up and eyes opened, gave a humorless huff of laughter as he squared his eyes with Dean's.
"Yes," he said, "I am keenly aware of how much I still exist." He swallowed as he shivered and his shivering inspired a new annoyed look of discomfort.
Dean's smile dropped.
"We'll get this figured out," he promised.
Castiel nodded with a hard swallow in his throat.
Dean turned his head away from Cas to a clicking sound and moments later the intact lights flickered into existence.
"Hey! And there was li..." Dean said as he turned to face Cas. His eyes widened as grappled with the truth in what he was seeing in front of him.
"Hoooooly shit," Dean exclaimed in shock.
"I don't think that's how that quote goes, Dean," Cas informed him, still trying to regain his composure and working diligently to support his own head. He tilted his head to the side quizzically as Dean just continued to gawk at something just behind Cas.
"Dean?" Cas tried again. Dean seemed dumbfounded.
Sam approached then from the other side of the warehouse saying, "That's all the lights I could-"
And then the tall man abruptly stopped talking as he, too, stared at Cas.
"Sam?" Cas said, getting worried through his exhaustion. "What-what's wrong? Is there something wrong?"
"You're an angel," Sam replied matter-of-factly but with the words holding a new weight.
"I-yes. What-"
"You have goddamned fucking wings!" Dean shouted. The irony of all of the adjectives was lost in the moment. Later Dean would reflect that the wings were neither damned by God nor fucking.
