Notes: Here we are, and with this chapter we have reached another milestone! 250,000 words! Now the original episode had a lot of fighting, and a lot of arguments that really wouldn't fit in well with my characters, so I had to fix this a bit. Hopefully everything still fits together well! And to offset the more gruesome scenes, I have also added in some brotherly fluff. Hope y'all like!

leahelisabeth: Bringing it now! Hopin' ya like! :D

ship. me: Yay! I made a new word! I feel so accomplished XD

makoto04: Oh luvy, I know how evil I am, and I enjoy every second of it! But I'm really happy to know that my evilness is well received. XD

Disclaimer: Who owns nothing? *This girl!*

CHAPTER 1

The last week had been…wonderful. There was no other way to describe it. It was like a the fog that had descended on the ship had finally lifted and everyone danced out to play in the sunshine for a bit.

Everyone was in a happy mood, well, in Meg's case it was more of a no longer scowling at everyone and everything mood. They had all been given the biggest pay day that any one of them had received in their lives and they all basked in the wonder that was non-bankruptcy. Most of them spent their off hours thinking of the many ways to squander their small fortune.

Not even caring about their own take of the cash, the Novaks were in the midst of their first mental break since they had first come aboard this ship, and they were beyond content to simply relax for the brief respite. Like a magic potion, Cas came alive with the addition of the drugs to his daily routine. With the pain gone, he seemed to break through some of the fog that had kept him so lost and even more often Dean felt like he was getting to know the old Cas, the pre-Host Cas.

The three brothers were now like children again, they would laugh and dash through the corridors, or toss food at one another during the evening meals, or playfully jump upon each other's backs in bouts of horseplay. Their happy mood had spread like sparkling wildfire and even Dean and Sam had gotten caught up in their enthusiasm and had started up one of their old prank wars that only stopped when some itching powder had found its way onto one of Bobby's white collars. Dean never knew the preacher's face could turn that red.

And while Sam and Gabriel spent a remarkable, yet in Dean's case hopefully forgettable amount of time in their room, Dean and Cas were spending more time in Cas' room. This sparked an almost domestic streak in the Captain, inspiring to try his hand at cooking a few surprisingly successful dinners for the crew a few times. "Nesting" Dean had called it when Sam had inquired about his brother's change of attitude.

Nesting indeed.

This was all not to say that Cas had made a spectacular recovery and was as sane as the rest of them, but he hadn't gone around making any more blood finger paintings on the walls. There was still that small fact that Cas was still riding the short yellow bus, he just was no longer the one licking the windows. This is what kept Dean and Cas to kisses and nothing more. As happy as Dean was to see the astounding change, he still held some small reserve of concern with the knowledge that if the drugs were taken away, it would all go back to how it was. Cas was not cured, this was a temporary assistance.

These thoughts followed Dean as Bobby and Gabriel summoned him to the infirmary.

"So what is it that you wanted to show me?" Dean asked the two. Gabriel and Bobby exchanged glances. For the last week, whenever they were both off duty, they had been pouring over the data collected from the 3-D imager, analyzing every last discrepancy that the machine had detected.

Bobby had learned more about the Host from these images and from what Gabriel had mentioned offhanded while they went over the scans than he had ever wanted or dreaded to know. The pilot and he had both braced themselves for the last week, dreading this moment when they would finally have to break the happy respite of the ship with news of their findings, but it couldn't be helped. Dean had to know what they had found.

The preacher sighed heavily, "We went through the scans and just wanted to give you a full report. That's why we waited to share anything before we had finished."

Dean steeled himself, ready to lose the momentary bliss that he had found. He knew it wouldn't last, "Okay. Hit me with it."

"Let's start with the brain scans," and Gabriel pulled up the first image on the screen in the infirmary. It showed a very detailed picture of Cas' cranium, enough that to Dean it looked like a real picture of one as opposed to some generalized diagram.

"If you look closely here…and here….sigh, and here, you can see some old scars from a scalpel," Gabriel said in a dead voice, pointing to different marks in the photo. Dean could just about make out the small and thin white lines of the scars.

"The only reason I knew of to make an incision in someone's brain is to…lobotomize them. To go in and remove damaged tissue, but…why anyone would cut into a healthy brain is…,"Bobby sighed heavily and swiped a hand over his face.

Gabriel's voiced cracked as he spoke again, "They did it over and over…. I had heard rumors about the Host starting in on more…intimate experiments. It was part of the reason I took off as fast as I did. I just…I had just held out hope that maybe Cas' condition had nothing to do with that. False and foolish hope, I guess."

Dean steadied the pilot with a gripping hand on his shoulder.

Breaking the tragic silence, Bobby cleared his throat and zoomed in on an interior image to the brain, "We also found upon closer examination that they stripped his amygdala."

Blankly Dean stared back, "His what?"

"You know how you get scared or worried or nervous, but you don't want to be scared of worried or nervous, so you push it to the back of your mind? You try not to think about it. The amygdale is what lets you do that. It's like a filter in your brain that keeps your feelings in check," Bobby finished, trying to sound impassive about it instead of the raw rage he felt at thinking about what this meant for Cas.

"So he feels everything. He can't not feel everything," Gabriel summarized bitterly.

A horrible hollowness filled Dean with the new knowledge. No wonder Cas had his "moments". Hell, if Dean had to deal with feeling his own feelings at all times, with everyone else's piled on top of that, surely his mind would have already collapsed from the strain. No matter what anyone said, Cas was not weak. He was damn strong to have held it together as well as he had. He didn't think it possible, but his hate for the Host doubled in intensity.

"Did you ever read the works of Shan Yu?" Bobby asked suddenly, startling Dean from his dark thoughts.

Sam chose that moment to walk into the room, and move to stand beside his brother,"You mean the psychotic dictator?" Of course the super nerd would know what Bobby was talking about.

Bobby nodded, "Yup. That's the one. Fancied himself quite the warrior-poet. Wrote volmes on war, torture…the limits of human endurance…."

Dean's whole body tensed as Bobby spoke. The Captain knew who Bobby was talking about all along as many a man he had "interrogated" during the war had compared Dean to. It was a bit of a sore spot, one might say, "A poet, you say? How nice," he commented mildly.

The preacher continued as if Dean hadn't said anything, "He said, "Live with a man forty years. Share his house, his meals, speak on every subject. Then tie him up and hold him over the volcanoe's edge, and on that day, you will finally meet the man."

"And what if you don't live near a volcano?" grunted Gabriel, his eyes still on the image on the screen in front of him.

Bobby glanced back, "As I said…probably being poetical."

Dean snorted, "Sadistic crap legitimized by florid prose, gotcha. So why do you bring him up? Don't tell me you're a fan?"

He paused a moment to glance once again at the brain scan on the monitor before replying, "I'm just wondering if they were fans…the people who did this to Cas."

"Didn't the government do this to Cas?" Sam commented, thinking on who ran and sponsored the Host.

"The government is a body of people, boy. Usually notably ungoverned," Bobby sighed.

It was Sam's turn to snort, "Now you're just starting to sound like Dean."

Bobby ignored him, "My point is, I was wondering if they put Cas through all this just to see how much he could take. To truly "meet him" as Shan Yu would have said.

"No. The Host would not waste so much time with simple philosophical endeavors. Their purpose in all this was very specific," Gabriel murmured darkly from where he still stared at the screen.

Bobby took a closer look, "Well, that might explain the pattern that I noticed earlier. Can't explain what that pattern means, but might just be beyond my simple knowledge. I'll be doing some more research on it all next time we break planet side. Pick up some books on neurology."

But these simplified guesses were not at all satisfying to Dean, "Damn straight they had a purpose. If all they cared about was hurting Cas, they wouldn't still be after him with such a gusto."

No one could argue with that logic. People were vengeful, but such an intense pursuit by government sponsored individuals would need more motive than simple bloodlust.

Bobby moved back to the scans, internally bracing himself for pulling up the next image that even Gabriel had been unable to explain yet.

Sam nudged Dean's shoulder, "Cas is doing better though, right?"

A small smile crept over Dean's face, "Yeah…with that new medication he hasn't been hurting much at all. Granted every once in a while he gets a little nauseous, but that's butt loads better than what was going on before. His mojo is almost all back too. He's even gone two nights now without sleep."

"Is the lack of sleep due to his energy coming back, or other reasons?" Gabriel waggled his eyebrows meaningfully.

Dean glared back, "Dude. We're taking it slow."

"Riiiiight. Sam and I take it "slow" sometimes too."

Dean ignored him, "Point is, he's doing better now that we've got his pain covered. It's the first step in getting him truly better."

"And we've got plenty of that drug to last for a good long while," Gabriel offered helpfully.

Sam smirked at this, "Yes, I'd almost forgotten that you three have recently become trio of criminal masterminds. You already mapping out your next heist with Cas' crayons?" he joked.

The pilot moved closer and ginned evilly, "It's still in the coloring book stages, but it's well on its way. I'm even thinking of growing a big mustache again. As you know, I'm ever the traditionalist."

"Oh, please no," Sam groaned, "That thing would scare the children and probably make Cas go hide in the cargo panels again."

"If you boys are all done talking about your hair, I've got the next scans that we wanted to show you," Bobby said seriously and everyone's smiles fell as they turned their attention to the screen.

It was just as Gabriel had seen before back in the hospital. Two big black shadows were arching along with Cas' back, starkly standing out from the pale blue of the rest of the image. Gabriel had spent hours with Bobby looking these over before, studying ever last edge of the shadows in hope of making out what they were. The imager data bank had no information to give on the intrusive objects, not recognizing them in any way and giving them no hints as to what they were. The pilot watched as the Winchesters gazed upon the sight for the first time, seeing their confusion and mild horror at the unnatural sight.

"What the hell am I looking at?" Dean demanded once the shock had dissipated enough for Dean to react in any way.

"We don't know."

Cautiously Dean stepped forward, as if whatever was showing in the image before him would suddenly spring free and hit him. He peered down at the shadows that showed at Cas' shoulder blades, thinking of the many times that he had massaged Cas' shoulders, just in that exact spot that when Dean's fingers dug in, Cas would mewl and sigh. Dean felt sick.

"What the fuck do you mean, 'you don't know'?! What the hell are those things in his back? Did they put them there? Can we take them out?"Dean yelled in horror.

"Calm down, boy! I'm no doctor and I sure as hell ain't a surgeon. If it is possible to take whatever they are out, I won't be the one to do it," Bobby shouted back.

Dean turned to Gabriel, "Then you fix it!"

Gabriel shook his head miserably, not at all angered by Dean's yelling, "You don't think that I've tried? I don't know why I can't do anything about it, but…it may be because of how our healing works," he said desperately.

"Wait…Gabriel. You said before that you can only heal the body, nothing unnatural or foreign, right?" Sam asked.

"We know that, Sam. That's why we have to get them out," Dean said impatiently.

Ignoring Dean, Sam glanced at Gabriel, and receive a hesitant nod, Sam continued his trail of thought, "Well…what if…those things are natural and there isn't anything to "fix"?"

The thought shocked all of them. It was certainly one way of looking at things.

"Whatever they are, there's nothing we can do about it now. We just have to keep up the medication and hope for more information to come up. Maybe once I get some research done one neurology, we can make more sense of the findings. Until then…we just have to deal," Bobby finished and shut down the screen, taking the damning image away.

Dean stared at the blank screen a moment longer, "Get to know the real man, huh," he stood up abruptly and walked to the door, "If we're just going to ignore the elephant in Cas' back for the time being, then I've got work to do. Thanks for the history lesson, Preacher."

And Dean left.

The sweet slap of a whip upon flesh filled the dark room, sending pleasant shivers down Dick Roman's spine. The only thing that would make the sound sweeter would be…

"AHHHHHH! Noooo!"

"Ah, yes. Such lovely screams you make, sir!" Dick cooed at the man strung up before him and then turned to one of his minions, making him stop his next whip mid flight.

"Hold him, please," and he stepped back to allow room for his minion to step forward and hold the swinging body in place. He would do it himself, but he didn't want to get his hands or suit dirty.

Dick moved up to his victim's ear and used his smoothest voice, "So now we are past the preliminaries. You know, the little questions of why you skim from my protection fund? How you could betray my trust. These questions we have past. Now we are zoning in on the real questions about who you truly are." Dick held out his hand and his minion quickly filled it with the hilt of a knife.

"I-I'm scho schorry, s-schir," the victim whispered brokenly past his now toothless mouth.

Dick ignored him and moved the knife up to his victims throat, watching as the man swallowed hard making the skin pulse up against the blade. He was about to add more pressure when the light suddenly broke into the room as another of his minions stepped into the room, opening the door frantically.

The sudden interruption made Dick clench his jaw in frustration and pull his knife away to address his minion, "Oh, really Charles? I was just about to get to the heart of the matter and you just have to interrupt? Bad form," he pouted.

"My apologies, sir, but one of our long ranges picked up a read on the other side of this world. It might be the Impala. Dean Winchester's ship," the minion reported quickly, hoping his news would be enough to rebuff his boss anger.

It did indeed seem to please Dick as he let a slimy smile crawl over his features, "Oh! Oh, this is exciting news! Why don't you send a team out right now and bring Mr. Winchester here to me. I'd love to chat with him," he requested sweetly and his minion quickly ran off to do his boss' bidding.

Feeling particularly giddy now, Dick turned back to his victim, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to hurry this along, so let's get back to business. Now tell me…," he rammed the knife into the victims gut, "are you familiar with the works of Shan Yu?"

Squeee! So much info in this chapter, hopefully you guys caught it all! Review iffin' you like!