A/N: Hi, my name is King, welcome to the Red Tree verse, or, like, the MTS verse I guess, because feels, and I don't own Supernatural.

MUCH TOO SOON

Castiel knows beginnings are difficult. Beginnings, and endings, too, he supposes, are so inherently human that Man has always been better equipped to cope with the uncertainty of death.

It takes Castiel a moment to recognize the fallacy of such thinking.

No, he understands now, humans are as well equipped to deal with their certain and timely demise as any being, regardless of its placement in the world.

Such are beginnings.

Sudden.

New.

More often than not, something has begun before it even has a name. And even without a name, it is new and wonderful.

Castiel thinks of Dean. The endings, too, are never quite final, not even in death. Human souls leave their earthly dwellings to go on into the afterlife. There are ways of knowing where they will go, of course, but even this knowledge has its limitations.

Castiel does not know where he will go once his long existence finally comes to an end. He ponders for the first time why there are no angel souls in hell, or purgatory, or heaven. Perhaps because angels have no souls.

He is not content with this discovery.

He never thought about dying until his death seemed so imminent, and only that was just minutes ago. He is not ready to leave this world, he recognizes. He would have had no such query if his death was an order or a result of the ruling by The Host. He would have never questioned it then, but now that it is his choice, he welcomes what it would save Dean, but not what it would kill himself.

He thinks of Dean's soul.

Dean's soul is rich and beautiful, and it is exactly the same like all the others, except not to Castiel. Dean's soul is precious to Castiel, and it's strange to place a value into something just because Castiel likes it. But he likes it. He loves it. But he loves Dean more than he loves Dean's soul, and he wants Dean to live.

A soul, it all it's glamour, is only an impression of a beautiful life gone by. A soul isn't a person. A soul is a photograph. .

That was the truth behind all that lived in heaven and hell.

It was harsh, but it was what it was. Afterlife wasn't life. Life was life. This was why Castiel wanted Dean to live.

And it is with his will that he exchanged Dean's death for his own.

Castiel wills it, but he still does not understand free will.

It is for Dean that he chooses to die tonight. Not for himself and not the The Host. For Dean.

Castiel remembers being born.

He remembers being born with nothing but a name and a purpose.

The specifics of the purpose were never clear, and he learned over his stay with Dean that nothing is ever really clear for any of God's creations. But he was born to serve heaven, and he knows this with certainty. There is no service in what he is about to do, and he was never one to bend the rules, but he understands the fine line between bending a stick and cracking it in half. Breaking the rules is not clean, he notices. There are splinters everywhere. Shreds and splinters of a stupid angel's broken heart, he supposes.

Today, Dean Winchester must die.

Castiel wonders how many Castiels just like him stood at this very spot a time ago today and decided to end their existence to save a Dean. Their Dean.

On this day Castiel must end.

He will never hear another prayer that goes through him on Thursday, never sit on the very edge of the furthest pillar which holds the Kingdom of Heaven above the planes of Earth, never again will he marvel in the beauty of Creation.

But, he looks on and smiles, I am not smiling, and you smile with your eyes, Cas, because he sees Dean Winchester, and Dean Winchester looks past him and waves his brother away.

This Dean does not know Castiel. Not yet.

This Dean is interrogating a barmaid who lusts for him. He lies to her about his profession, and when she says she likes his suit, he lies and says the temperature of the bar is too high and perhaps he should take it off. He agrees to go with her after she is done working because her accommodations have central air conditioning.

Castiel is not bothered by this.

Samuel, buddy, just call him Sam, he really doesn't need to grow any bigger, jus' look at him, has left the bar and is interrogating the dog outside. They are, after all, on a hunt for vampires. Perhaps the barmaid or the dog has seen something suspicious.

"And sweetheart, get one for my friend here."

"No, thank you."

"Dude. Nothing weird," Dean slides a glass down the bar at Castiel, "on me. I'm celebrating," he winks at the bar girl and she winks at him. "You look like you need to get lucky. No offence, man, but you look like crap. Those girls in the back are on a sorority initiation," Dean claps him on the back, "you're welcome."

Castiel looks into Dean's soul for a brief moment and sees black rot suffocating his beautiful essence. It's unsettling, dark, and yet no soul is ever ugly, especially not Dean's, not now, and not a year from now, and not ever.

"Ah. That is not what troubles me. But thank you, I appreciate the sentiment," Castiel licks at his beer. It tastes as any bitter inequity would. The only times he likes beer is when he can taste it on Dean's lips. But this isn't their time. Not yet.

"Shame," Dean says and chugs his own drink. "You not from this town?"

"No," Castiel says.

"Looking for someone?"

"Yes. I am looking for my friend."

"Your friend lost or somethin'?"

"No," Castiel says honestly. "But I was lost."

He longs to say goodbye. He is a creature of a habit, not of sentiment, and saying well-wishes and goodbyes was never a custom when sending or being sent into a battle.

It is a custom to profess love onto his brothers and sisters. But Dean is, in a sense, his family, more than that, so much more. Castiel wonders if Dean knows this. He must. Castiel blames himself for never telling him. Dean has never grasped at the finer meanings of life, never quite understood Castiel, only loved him, and hoped the feeling was mutual. Castiel feels Dean's hope even now, a long time from now, but what is time if not a distance? He feels loss at never having told. He could remedy it now. He could simply lick at his beer and tell Dean he loves him, and Dean would understand what he had meant when the time is right.

But he doesn't say anything.

He cannot. Dean does not know him yet.

This is the hardest part. He thought it would be easier. This life, Dean's life, the brief time they spent together exchanging kisses between sheets was nothing but a moment lived and gone in Castiel's long existence. Castiel thought the plague and the wars were blinks in time, breaths exhaled, moments passed. This, this was so much shorter. And yet it was everything.

And he must let it go.

"Thank you for the beer," Castiel says solemnly. He had prayed for God to guide him in every uncertainty, and as blasphemous as it is for an angel to think such thoughts, he does not need God now. He is at his own devises, and he has come to terms with this.

He touches Dean's shoulder. Dean is warm and beautiful. The touch lingers. Not because he knows his grace is almost drained into Dean and by the time he lets him go there would be enough of Castiel left for only one more trip in time, but because he loves Dean and does not want the moment to end.

But Dean had taught him human things about cars and pornography and personal space, and Castiel honors that. He lets go, and stumbles immediately.

Castiel is almost nothing now.

Dean is ignorant of what has occurred.

He walks out without another word.

It is better this way.

The door to the bar opens, and at once Castiel is in Paradise, in the beginning of all things, and at the end of his.

1: White Horse

Ch 1: The Trolley Problem

Dean heard stories.

Everyone heard stories, but Dean heard about the aftermath, so he liked to think he had more credibility.

They stories he and Sammy heard on their way down the interstate through radio and a sorry bleeding someone in the back seat weren't horror stories or anything. Well, they were sort of horror stories, though Dean had a long list of first-hand experiences with horror and so his judgment may have been a bit biased. They were, at the very least, nasty stories. Stories about nasty things guardian angels did to their wards.

That was the thing, though. That wasn't the point, the point wasn't to grab as many humans as would fit in a basket and torture them, no, those were demons. Angels were a bit different in their purpose but not really their methods. Angels were down here to save souls.

Dean would put "apparently" right next to that big heap of bullshit.

The mentality behind it was that Dean (and his seven billion distant cousins) were given free will, and as long as they didn't go around putting kittens in trees, they could keep their free will, and eat it, too.

Touch, but don't taste. Taste, but don't swallow. That kind of thing.

Dean wouldn't swallow even at gunpoint.

Thing was, it was a half-assed attempt, so good try, angels. A for effort, but D for dedication. Dean knew a couple of spunky girls who'd even let him put the two together.

People still went to hell, thank the Lord and the Angels for trying, though. Dean always assumed he'd be one of the people to go get flushed down the pit. He figured this out sometime between carrying his baby brother out of a blazing wreckage of their very short-lived childhood and ganking a demon bitch right between her host's bright blue eyes, very alive and very aware of it all. Dean kind of assumed that when his short and fucked up life was finally over and done with, he'd go to hell. Hell on Earth was what he knew, and you don't just get away from that.

So he owned it. He ganked more bitches, slept with more lovely ladies of the Interstate, kept his moose of a baby brother out of trouble, stole credit cards and lulled himself into oblivion with Hunter's Helper.

Such was life. It was his, and he was proud of it.

So when one fine morning Dean peeled his eyes open after a strange dream about chilling out on a red tree with a guy in a brown coat, he woke up under a motel blanket and a curvy bar girl who'd supplied him endless free shots and her apartment number the night before. There was a pleasant tingling in his body, but it wasn't from having a good lay, no; it tingled and burned until it receded and pooled into the long stretch of skin down Dean's left wrist, just above the vain where he couldn't carve it away.

He watched the harsh, raw redness of the eroding skin on his wrist take shape, and the curse took hold of his mind.

At first, he thought witch. Then, it was bitch, then it was son-of-a-bitch, and then it was a mind-numbing sense of having lost everything.

His curse was a fucking Trinity. He was cursed by Heaven itself.

Dean pretended to take a piss, grabbed all his shit and bolted out of town before the blonde – Morgan or Megan or something - saw the curse and prayed for him.

Marked by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Dean contemplated leaving Sammy a note and taking his baby to do a James and Catherine. He was expecting to cross the Hell Bridge when he got there. He wasn't expecting to get marked for salvation.

So as Dean was concerned, his Lady Luck was sitting in a cloud somewhere and feeding laxatives to seagulls right above his head.

"What's wrong with you," Sam said during their bloated and silent Drive of Shame.

"Nothin'," Dean glared pointedly and hit a pothole. "Fuck."

"…okay."

"Okay what," he glared again, and lo and behold, there was another pothole.

Sam sniggered. "Did she give you bad news in the morning?"

"What? No."

"Dude. You'd tell me if it's herpes or something, right? We share clothes."

"No. It's- wait, what?"

Sam chewed his tongue.

"We do what? Are you stealing my shit again?"

"No. I meant like shirts and stuff."

"Sam. Did you put your dirty shirt-stretcher into my good shirts." Dean hissed in a not-question.

"No."

If Dean had to guess, Sam probably beamed trustworthiness at him with his large, girlish eyes. But that was only a guess. He didn't know what Sam was doing, because if anything of value was to be learned that night, it was that Dean Winchester should keep his (normal-sized, manly) eyes on the road.

Sam was as full of shit as Dean was. He was lucky though, because cuts and bruises were something that just happened, and Sam paid no mind to the bandage Dean conspicuously wrapped around his cursed wrist.

There was no need for Sam to know Dean could be picked up at any moment and airlifted off into the sunset. There was no need for Sammy to know because Dean was going to deal with it.

"That's a bit narrow for a grave," Sam was saying when they made it to a job where a nasty trickster was going ape-shit 'round town and eating poor bastards, apparently with bones and everything because no bodies were ever found, and then used the poor bastards' credit cards to pay off its massive gambling debt.

How could a trickster even be bad at freakin' gambling? Dean could hassle pool like a motherfucker, and he was perfectly human.

"I kinda feel bad for this one. Tricksters shouldn't even have to eat humans," Sam was saying, but Dean knew better than to preach Sam on his sympathy for the devil thing. There was enough devils and not nearly enough sympathy to go around, it was just that Sam needed a correct target he could bathe with sympathy and feelings and decorative doilies.

"The grave's for my hopes and dreams," said Dean and waited for Sam to get distracted by something pink and shiny so he could toss an angel blade into the dirt and bury it under a pile of leaves.

This was his plan. Dig the blade out later and kill whatever motherfucker came after him.

What, nobody said it was a good one.

"A bit shallow, too."

"Your face is shallow."

Sam tossed him an axe, and it nearly caught him on the shoulder of his flannel.

He gestured his thanks to Sam.

Sam appreciated the gesture by throwing more stuff at him, this time aiming for injury.

"You had had it coming," Dean said and dodged a flask of holy water that should be empty, really, except it sloshed as it flew by Dean and Dean remembered throwing it into the backseat where Sam was complaining about needing to piss and then tuning out his pleas for a pit stop with some soulful Michel Jackson.

Oh no.

Sam wouldn't.

Dean didn't say anything, but decided they had enough flasks to afford to leave that one under a pile of dead leaves and dirt.

Forty minutes later, a nosy ten-year old neighbor of trickster's parents' uncle's Bob (or something, Dean couldn't be bothered to remember) was leering at Dean's car.

"Do FBI agents usually have axes in their back seats?" the girl was asking, and Dean was about to tell her the axe was evidence in their current axe murderer investigation, but her conservatively-dressed mother rushed out in house slippers and interrupted Dean's lesson in trusting strangers.

"Claire, get back inside, it's late."

"These people are police, mom. Maybe we could ask them to look for da-"

"No, honey," the woman's voice softened. "Just get inside."

Oh, but nothing screamed an information goldmine like a spooked housewife whose house smelled like freshly-baked apple pie. A real fucking pie.

Sam realized what Dean was thinking, silently agreed with him (about the information thing, not about the pie thing), cleared his throat and adjusted his tie.

"Is anything troubling you, m'am?"

"No, sorry about that. Carry on, officers," she turned to leave.

Oh, but Dean couldn't just let a pie walk away.

"M'am, we're investigating the disappearance of-"

The woman stopped dead in her tracks, but said nothing.

"-your neighbor. Have you seen or heard anything strange?"

The woman relaxed, but still didn't say anything.

"If you're uncomfortable having this conversation out here, we can always step inside—" Dean began, hopeful.

"No. No… It would only give Claire ideas."

"What ideas, m'am?"

"Her father, my husband… you know what, it's not a police matter."

Sam pursed his lips like he understood what she meant, and Dean caught on soon after that.

"You are sure your husband is not, ah," he tried putting it delicately, "missing?"

"No," she said.

"Alright. What about your neighbor?"

"What about him?"

"Anything… excessive?"

"Excessive? That house," she waved at the probably-dead-guy's house in disdain, "is a frat house. There are ten of them in there, let God be the judge of what is excessive for that lot. I have to get my daughter inside, excuse me."

"Um," Dean tried.

Sam picked up the conversation smoothly.

"What about drugs, alcohol? Any… unusual behavior?"

The woman shook her head and was already walking back to her front door.

"This is Pontiac, gentleman. Illinois is not a great place to go to look for unusual behavior. They just go to the old bomb shelter. Probably to do drugs. Claire, I said, get back to the house."

"Did you tell them to look for daddy?" the girl squeaked, but her mother stuffed her through the door and shut it.

"Ouch," said Sam.

Dean had the brilliant idea to go a-snoopng around the old bomb shelter a minute later, and that was when lady luck really started loading machine guns with bird shit and firing it against Dean's proverbial windshield.

The bomb shelter, of all things it could have been housing, hosted demons. Like thirty of them. Except they were all asleep, and of course Sam realized there were thirty fucking demons in there only when all thirty smelled their breakfast.

And so Dean forgot about his curse. In his defense, he was busy killing shit, but he forgot the trinity on his hand and all that it implied, and he forgot only for a moment, but that's was all it took.

"Behind you!"

Sam was actually ahead of him, but there was no time for shoulder checks. Dean sprinted for his brother, mock-tossed him the knife, and some bitch actually jumped ahead to try and catch something that wasn't flying.

Dean dropped the knife and kicked it, Sam, dropped to the ground, caught the knife, and gutted the bitch mid-air.

Dean could taste the rain outside, it tasted like wet dirt under the wheels of impala, it tasted like tree bark after summer rain in Kansas, it tasted like his little brother's mashed peas and carrots, and there it was, he was out, on the free side of the rusty door he could just bolt shut-

"Sammy, hurry the fuck up!"

There was no "yeah" or "behind you."

There was not even a shout of pain or a call for help, and Dean would've heard it if there was one, through the haze of red mist and the blood throbbing in his ears and the blood that probably actually clogged his ears, he would've heard a shout, if there was a shout, but there was no shout.

"Sam!" and Dean was slicing his way back into the rotting hallway of hell, stabbing evil things upright and on the ground, discriminating against nothing and shouting, calling for Sam—

'Oh God," Dean thought, and it was a prayer, and he prayed because he forgot that he no right to pray for anything. "Please don't let him be dead."

And they heard him.

They heard him and they descended softly, so softly that they made no sound.

The only sound was a wet sound that came from his forearm. Torn up by somebody's pet hellhound, the wound itself didn't register until someone's dick fingers dug into it.

Dean, in his mad pursuit of something he couldn't find, grunted, spun, stabbed the bastard on impulse, and propelled himself forward.

Except the grip on his arm made him nearly dislocate his shoulder.

…what.

He spun to stab again, in the face this time, except his blade was caught.

By the blade.

And he didn't need to see Heaven in its blue eyes to realize what the fuck the trench-coat thing holding him was.

"No!" he tore, "My brother is—"

And then everything was a blur, then it was blue, then white, then that bright green from that one rave party Dean never lived down, and when he finally broke free and ran for his brother, he was in a lavishly-decorated room with silver candlesticks, fruit in fruit bowls, paintings and carpet, and Dean was dripping blood on the carpet and Sam, Sam—

"PUT ME BACK," Dean shouted at nothing in particular because the fucking angel that snatched him had gone where it came from, and really, Dean should work on that too, Sam was out there, somewhere, he needed help and Dean was stupid, oh so stupid—

The white paneling of the room had to have a hidden door somewhere, and Dean spent the first hour of his imprisonment in the Green Room clawing at the walls and tearing out his fingernails until every panel had blood and bits of skin and nail and flesh all over it.

Dean spent the following twenty three hours discovering new combinations of cursing and begging, if only to be let out, if only to save his brother, if only to get a confirmation his brother was fine, but none came.

He didn't eat anything at first, not for the first couple of days, he only cursed excessively and continued breaking expensive furniture against walls.

The fruit never went stale, and when he ate a fucking pear on the fourth day, another just like it appeared in its place. There were also hamburgers he was sure weren't there before, just like a bathroom that appeared out of nowhere when he considered tearing off a rather nice replica of Da Vinci's Annunciation angels and taking a piss on it to make his stance on this bullshit was as clear as yellow.

Dean's cool-down was eighteen days long.

He never once stopped trying to get to get to his brother.

And Castiel watched him, and searched for Sam, but he was not the Castiel that would be, he was Castiel that was, and he knew nothing about what he would be prepared to do for Dean.

This was Castiel's beginning.

Please put stuff in the spare change box.

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