Author's Note: Okay, well, I know I should be working on my other fics, but a few weeks ago I just had this rush of fic ideas for my OTP, and I'm not ashamed. I've been thinking of this one the most, although I started another one first (and that one's first chapter is a LOT longer than this one). I really hope you guys enjoy this because this ship is very special to me, holds a special place in my heart, et cetera. I am in love with both of the characters involved and I hope that even if you aren't, you can still like the concept of this fic as much as I do. I don't know when I'll post the other fics, but it'll be sometime soon, I promise. Enjoy!

The first thing Dean noticed, as always, was the temperature. It felt like heat was rolling all over his body in thick, scalding waves, kneading its onyx-colored, skeletal knuckles into his flesh. He recognized this place. How could he not? How could he ever forget this place, with its humidity which sucked and pulled at him, its razor-sharp teeth that consistently, endlessly tore at him?

This was the place of hellhounds. This was the place of the Devil.

This was Hell.

In all its bruising, God-awful glory. Hell. At its finest, at its worst; it bore down on him and licked at him, taunting him from his hair to his toenails with a fiery demand for acceptance. It told him that this was okay, but the feeling in his gut knew it wasn't, knew it never had been and never would be.

Dean remembered, oh yes. He remembered this feeling. Forty years' worth of it, so long ago that it felt like a lifetime, but not long enough that he'd stopped being terrified. He was always terrified, no matter where he went or what he did. Imagine that; Dean Winchester, apparently the greatest hunter, apparently fearless…being afraid.

But anyone would be afraid, he knew. Anyone but Lucifer himself.

And it seemed, since Dean was Michael's vessel…that Lucifer had a particular amount of torment set for Dean's soul. Call it brotherly love.

But he wasn't being tortured or taunted, no, not like in all the other nightmares. This one was new. This one felt, if possible, more personal than the other thousands of night terrors. He wasn't waiting for someone to hurt him, someone to rip his flesh from his limbs and then pack it all on for the next day…

No, he was waiting for it to happen to someone else.

He was standing there, itching, in front of the rack. The rack he'd been tortured on. The rack he'd tortured others on. It was a horrible thing, something that twisted him and killed him a little more each and every day: that Dean Winchester, instead of saving everybody, had saved only himself and subjected others to turmoil. It was sharp like knives and cunning like swords, crept up on him in the middle of the day, when he'd be eating lunch with Sammy and giving his little brother shit about eating salad…every time he smiled, he remembered everything awful. Like his subconscious knew that even though he wanted to be happy, he didn't deserve to be.

And he was waiting.

Dean's first, natural instinct was to flee. Anyone with enough sense to run when they realized they weren't on the torture list, not today, would flee. They wouldn't wait, not like he was doing now. He couldn't help it; he'd lost the use of his legs.

His second instinct – the one he acknowledged and listened to – was to call out. His lips formed the words, praying for an answer. Sam, he called. Cas.

But if they were there, they didn't respond. He didn't know if they would or wouldn't, and wasn't sure whether to believe that they even could reply, if they were there.

He hoped they weren't.

So his body, like seasons changing, moved to instinct number three: kill whatever son of a bitch was keeping him here, and maybe save a few poor, unfortunate souls in pain and in need. His trademark smirk, the smirk that he'd fashioned as a kid to prove to people outside that he was fearless, reckless, in control…it appeared on his face, as had become habit, and he turned around.

Well, at least, he tried to turn around. The whole body-suddenly-made-of-stone thing was throwing him off a little, and he couldn't exactly figure out how to get rid of it. The crown of thorns that was seemingly embedded into his skull dug its sinful little pokey things into his head, deep into his brain, and he flinched, twitched, cried out a little.

His vision went out and came back for a second, and he bunched up his muscles, like a wolf raising its hackles, and his toes curled into the dirty, decaying ground. He didn't want to think about what he was standing on, what had stood there before him…

And suddenly, he didn't have to anymore. Suddenly, he was staring at something so horrific, something he had never imagined, something he still couldn't believe even as it happened before his own eyes…

They slapped her on the rack and he remembered how terrible it felt, like yesterday, or as if it was really, actually happening to him. He remembered the rough surface of the metal, perhaps cast-iron, that scalded his skin and branded him in a lattice pattern, only to be healed and re-applied the next time. He remembered how the metal was scorching, searing hot; so heated that it felt like ice.

Flames pushed at his back, pushed him closer to her. He could hear her now, over the roar of the damned souls around him. His ears were set to her frequency, and soon, she was all he could hear.

She was whimpering, shaking. Her hands were moving so fast that they looked to have been a smudged pencil sketch. She wailed and begged for them to leave her alone, just for today, that they could do double tomorrow if they just let her be today. She pleaded with them, the unseen monsters that took pleasure in hurting her over and over again. It was a position that Dean had been in, once. Both positions, really.

She was naked. They'd stripped her clothes like they'd stripped his, like they stripped everybody's. Of course, in Hell, you're not aware of other people's nudity like you would be on Earth. It's accepted, like wearing clothes, and honestly? You've got more to be worried about.

Like torture.

The whip was raised; he could see it through all the white-colored steam and the charcoal-colored smoke. Such things hung in a smog, all around this place. Made it even harder to breathe than the saturated air or the gasping pain that affects you so harshly. Dean choked out a sob, like he might choke on this air. That sob in itself matched every appeal he'd ever cried out to the torturers; the judges, the juries, and the executioners. He, of course, knew her pain.

And then it hit him: she'd been dead a lot longer than he'd been dead when he was here. He knew the exact date she had died, and was afraid to try and calculate the math. He had been here for forty years…and she'd been here a lot longer.

His rage welled up and spilled over, and he started screaming bloody murder at the same time her desperate, whispered pleas rose to piercing, agonizing howls. The whip cracked relentlessly at her back, and her bindings were tightened every time she pulled at them. She bled from all over, caterwauling.

He remembered the shame and anguish and hate that had been lashed into him with every thrust of the whip, and knew that she was being dealt the same horrors. She didn't deserve that; damn, she didn't deserve that.

He called her name, over and over again; bellowed it, hollered it, until the walls started to melt around him and his face started to ooze. He scratched and clawed at himself, feeling his flesh come right off, exposing his blood and organs. He should've known something was off, because he was clothed, whereas he wasn't usually when he was in this place.

His boots dug into the rot underneath him, and her shrieks rattled his brains and his bones and he felt like blowing up the world, shooting everyone and everything…but at the same time, he was aware that he was leaving. Being teleported, summoned, grabbed by an angel…who knew. And as he was being pulled away, Dean could've sworn that he heard her start screaming his name. Jo, he tried to call back to her. Jo.

His eyes opened.

And he was in bed.

Dean frowned, sitting up immediately and allowing himself to thrash around in the darkness, trying to find a lamp or a light switch. His fingers found purchase against a lamp shade and he felt around until something clicked and light filled the room.

It was a hotel room; and he recalled that he was staying here with Sam. They had been working a case on vampires and were between jobs. Yeah, he remembered.

It was a dream, then. He could recognize it as a nightmare on a conscious level, now.

This sated his fear, at first. He rubbed at his eyes for a long time, wiping the wetness from them that he couldn't quite admit were tears, even to himself. He remembered his father telling him boys don't cry a few times, and then they both grew out of that stage when Sam started crying more often.

Okay, so yeah, he was crying. Post-traumatic stress disorder does that to a person. He scrubbed at his face a litter longer and then stood up, trying not to get caught in the sweat-soaked sheets of the lumpy motel bed that he'd been sleeping on. He turned to check the other bed, making sure Sam was still asleep, but saw that his brother was gone instead.

His eyes flicked to the clock and it said it was five AM, and any suspicion he had dropped tremendously. Sam was probably out getting them breakfast.

Good, Dean thought to himself. I don't want to have to explain that to him if I don't have to. He scratched the back of his head and decided he should take a shower. A long, cold shower.

He entered the small, shitty bathroom next to his bed and undressed, taking his damn time because it felt like his entire body was in agony. He wasn't surprised.

In the shower, he washed himself completely, taking care to get the really gritty-feeling parts of himself that he usually ignored when he was on the hunt (sometimes all he had time to wash were the bare necessities). Then, he stood for what felt like hours, just staring at the ivory-colored plastic walls of the shower. Dean felt little droplets of water trickling around his scalp, then running down his forehead to his lips, before he spat to avoid what might've been recycled pee getting swallowed.

And then the thought hit him: What if it wasn't just a dream? …What if he was having one of those weird vision-y dreams that Sam had thoroughly experienced?

A primal shudder rose and grabbed Dean by the spine, shaking him roughly, vehemently. This couldn't have been just a normal nightmare. He'd never had it before. He'd never even considered that she might've gone to Hell, of all places.

Because fuck, she didn't deserve it. Not her. Not there.

She deserved better.

He almost fell as he jumped out of the shower, almost forgetting to turn it off in his haste. Did it matter? No. But it would raise the bill, so yes. He didn't want any shit from Sam about it.

He was positive she was in Hell, now. And it was driving him crazy that he didn't know what to do about it. That he couldn't do anything about it. He dressed in a hurry.

Dean remembered how it felt to be mauled by a hellhound. How it felt to wake up in Hell. How the feelings of all the different types of torture were forever burned into his memory, haunting him even when he was happy and content. Now, he was absolutely terrified; outraged and trying to hold himself together.

But it was difficult, and he was losing his mind quicker than he was losing hope, so Dean did the only thing he could do.

"Cas," he spoke, tone quiet and controlled. "Get your angelic ass here, right now. Please."

It wasn't more than a minute before the angel appeared in front of Dean, his eyes open and unblinking as he stared at the human, who sat on the edge of the bed with a weary expression.

"Dean," said the angel Castiel, moving closer to the person he once fished out of Hell. "What do you need?"

Jo, he thought.

Dean was sitting on his hands, trying to stop them shaking. He was terrified, of course he was terrified. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. Swallowing hard, he tried again, and this time, he was able to say, "I need some answers."

The angel nodded slowly, an estranged look on his face. "You may ask me your questions," he told Dean.

Dean gestured for Castiel to sit, and Castiel pulled up a chair from the small card table that was part of the room so that they were sitting face to face. "Cas," Dean warned. "I know I've told you about personal space."

"…Right," said Cas. "Sorry." He scooted his chair back about a foot. "Is this better?"

"Yeah." Dean sniffed, hoping his eyes weren't noticeably red. He didn't think he'd cried for that long. He could probably chalk it up to sneezing or something if Cas asked. "Uh," he began, trying not to fidget, "I wanted to ask you about…Hell."

"I don't understand what you mean," Castiel said briefly. "You've been there, Dean."

"No. I want to know how you pulled me out. You know? You gripped me tight, raised me from perdition…"

Castiel sighed, something rare. "Well, the others and I found out you were there and laid siege to rescue you. It was just like bending down and taking hold of you."

Dean nodded, accepting the answer although it wasn't what he was looking for. "Yes, and then when Sam ended the Apocalypse, Crowley changed Hell. You pulled Sam from the pit, and I was wondering…had anything changed?"

"You mean to ask if Sam went through the same punishment as you," Castiel wondered, a light line forming between his eyebrows. "I suppose he did. There's the queue of souls in line, and Sam was being tortured, so I would assume that while Hell itself had changed, the punishments had not."

Dean mulled over bringing up the whole you-went-power-crazy-and-absorbed-all-of-the-souls-in-Purgatory thing; decided against it. It'd been years since he'd first met Cas, but the memories were burned into him like they were just yesterday, but a lifetime ago…just like the memories of Hell.

"You pulled Sam and me out of perdition," Dean stated, allowing himself to fidget, his hands having come out from under himself while he was speaking. "Thank you for that. It was difficult, during and after, I imagine. Um…what would've happened if I hadn't broken the first Seal?"

"Nothing," Castiel shrugged. "The Apocalypse wouldn't have been set into motion."

"Do the Seals still exist?"

"They always have and always will," Castiel replied. "They are eternal, like most of the things that are related to Heaven and Hell."

"Alright…so if, say, someone hadn't broken the Seals and needed bad to be grabbed out of perdition…" Dean's voice trailed off, and he grimaced, hoping Castiel wouldn't catch on until he needed him to.

Castiel's face remained blank, but that didn't mean he was clueless. "Why did you call me here, Dean? What's the reason behind all these questions?"

Dean flinched. Ah, yes. The suspicion had already set in. What could he say to Castiel, this angel who had probably gone to great lengths and risks to rip even one soul out of Hell? What could he say to make Castiel realize that this was a grave necessity; something Dean so desperately and hopelessly needed?

He swallowed again, staring at the angel and hoping Cas would understand without him having to speak. When it became apparent that Cas was going to remain in the dark until Dean told him, Dean broke eye contact, looking down and away. He wet his lips, sighing heavily, and rubbed a hand on his leg, where a mosquito had bitten him the other night.

"Cas," he began, avoiding looking at the angel, whose intense gaze he could feel on him, boring through him like the fires of Hell itself.

Then the idea came to him, and it was a wretched, rotten idea, to bargain with something so priceless. But what he was bargaining for was priceless as well, and he felt that it might even be worth more than the thing he was about to offer to Cas.

"You tell me that I should have faith, right?" Dean said suddenly, blurting it out with abandon. He figured it'd be better not to delay. Cas's eyebrows raised a fraction in surprise, and his lips parted slightly as he too searched for something to say.

Then, he replied, "Yes, Dean." The furrow in his brow deepened almost exponentially as his intrigue for what Dean was planning took over him. It was a strange look to see on Castiel's usually-serene face, but Dean didn't take too much surprise.

He was too busy guilt-tripping himself for the things he was about to do, and the things he had already done.

But he knew, with all his head and all his heart, that it was right. It'd be painful and exhausting and costly, but it was worth it. He hated that he couldn't do it himself, hated that he had to involve Cas after putting the angel through so much already, but it was something he had to do.

It was something he had to do.

Dean shifted his weight on the bed, staring hopefully into Castiel's pale blue eyes. This was just Castiel's vessel, a shell, but if Castiel ever took on a different body, Dean knew that it wouldn't really feel like Castiel, would it.

He remembered all he'd seen of Cas – Jimmy Novak's body, the little girl Claire's body, becoming a God with the trapped souls of Purgatory, Emanuel, the Castiel of the future…And now, he was the Winchesters' guardian. Watching over Sam and Dean, answering their prayers for him sometimes…

His voice shook as he asked the angel, "Are you willing to help me restore that faith?"

Castiel nodded slightly, and said, "Yes, Dean."

Dean took the answer gladly, nodding a little bit more than he should've, and tried to push down the giddiness that was suddenly rising within him. Shut up, Dean, he thought to himself. You don't know if this'll work or not. We don't even have a plan yet.

But he can't stop himself from thinking, I'm coming for you, baby. I'm coming to rescue you like I should've done a long time ago. I'm so sorry, Jo. I'm so sorry it's taken me this long to realize…

He calmed himself, telling himself not to get choked up again, not in front of Cas. His hands formed fists that he squeezed almost too tightly, digging his short fingernails into his palms. He took another shaky breath, knowing that it wouldn't be the last of this journey, this adventure, this quest, and said to Castiel, "Then there's something I need you to do for me."