Chapter One : Sanctus

The sky was murky, covered with the froth of clouds. The light of stars pierced their way through the curtains, shining light down upon the darkened Earth. The moonlight fell on a man who was lying in the snow, his face upturned to the celestial lights above.

Red blossoms were coming to life beside him, the vibrant color bringing depth to the drearily colored landscape, even if the crimson liquid pouring out of him was draining the only life away for miles.

The imprint of large wings sprung forth from him in the snow, even though none could be visibly seen. His eyes were fixed on some unseen point in the heavens, as if he was bidding someone fair well.

The cold snow brought numbness to his limbs, making the pain turn into a dull throb. He let his earthly blood leak out into the frozen crystals, staining the once pristine white into a cherry red.

This was where Castiel was going to die. Not from a demon, or a Leviathan. Not from a vengeful spirit or from an archangel's blade, but from his fall from heaven above.

He had felt the wind rip at his feathers, tearing them to shreds as he made his final descent.

He hadn't given his last words to Sam and Dean. How much he thought of them as family, how much they had changed his life for the better. Now here he was, an angel, fallen from heaven for his second time in God knows where.

There it was, the blackness taking over his vision, creeping into the one sense he had left. For he could not smell the tang of iron coming from his blood, he couldn't hear the wolf's howls or feel the bitter breeze.

Castiel looked at the sky for the last time, soaking in all the light he could from the stars and moon.

And then the angel closed his eyes.

It burned. Everything burned. It felt like Hell was swallowing him whole. Maybe this was where the Fallen go, to Lucifer's home would only be fitting.

Flames licked at his sides, sending fireworks of pain running up his body. Eternal torment, suffering and wishing for death. But it had already came, you couldn't die if you were already dead.

This prospect made Castiel wonder.

Where was he if he wasn't dead?

A blinding light suddenly filled his vision, making him want to close his eyes immediately. But when did he ever open them?

Then the sounds came. At first they didn't sound like much, just the normal radio waves that rang in his ears, but then the noises condensed themselves into words. He could just hear voices, but words were slow to trudge their way out of the fog.

"Cas? Cas can you hear me?"

It was Dean. Oh thank the Heavenly Hosts. The white light began to shift around his vision, revealing the blurred face of the older Winchester.

He managed a small nod through the lifting haze.

Castiel scanned the area he could see and saw the leather seats of the Impala. His first reaction was shock that he wasn't in front of the wheel, but Sam was.

It took him too long to realize that Dean was literally holding up his head with his hands, but he didn't argue, hell it was hard enough to breathe.

His coat had been discarded to the foot of the seat, one side soaked through with blood. How that garment stayed with him during the fall he wouldn't ever know.

Bandages wrapped his torso and stomach, so tight that his lungs had trouble letting air in.

Dean looked up to the front, "How many miles we got left Sam?"

The younger brother briefly looked into the rearview mirror, "About thirty."

Sam immediately looked back to the scene outside the windshield. He couldn't stand looking at Cas like that, not when he seemed so broken and bleeding. It just looked so wrong.

The angel's eyes had begun to close again, but Dean took this as another opportunity to not fail as he did three hours before. He shook his head with his free hand, causing Cas's eyes to lazily flutter open, "Hey, Cas, I need you to stay with me alright?" He said, putting his hand back under the man's skull. His fingers viciously protested as he had been making them hold this position for hours. "I just need you to hold on for another thirty minutes."

Sam was already pushing the speed limit, seeing as it was at thirty-five MPH and he was already doubling it.

Cas's blue orbs were halfway closed as he looked up at Dean, his eyes pleading for him to just let him sleep. "I know Cas, I know," Dean murmured.

Thirty minuted were horrendously long in all of their minds, filled with the thought of: Is he gonna live?

He was woken so many times by Dean he just wanted to scream, but his voice wouldn't allow as much as a whimper.

As the turn of the roads became familiar in his mind, the more Sam's foot pressed on the pedal.

As soon as the sight of the boarded up house came into view Sam unlocked the car, slowing it down to a halt.

He ran towards his brother's side of the car, opening the door.

Dean, as gently as he could, lifted Castiel and gingerly out him in his sibling's outstretched arms. Sam hooked his hands under his shoulders, pulling him out of the car as Dean grabbed his legs.

The injured man's head pressed against Sam's stomach, fighting the urge to fall into unconsciousness, a battle which he he ultimately failed.

Soon Castiel's head rolled to the side with his mouth slightly parted.

"Damn," Dean muttered under his breath, walking up the steps to the house riddled with pentagrams and Devil's traps. Sam somehow managed to open the door without dropping him, and set him carefully down onto the couch.

They both knew they couldn't risk taking him to a bed, it might take them too long to get there, might be too late.

He left the room to gather medical supplies, his rushed footsteps to be heard around the house.

Dean adjusted Cas on the upholstery, propping his head up on the armrest in place of his hands. He pulled up a chair and started slowly lifting his shirt from his chest, already seeing bandages that needed to be changed.

Sam came back with the first aid and a bottle of peroxide in-hand, holding the peroxide soaked wrappings between his fingers.

He peeled away the bloodied bandages from Cas's side, revealing a long gash that would leave a scar no matter how it'd heal.

He held out an outstretched palm which was soon filled with needle and thread. He held the end of the thread between his teeth, funneling the other through the microscopic hole of the needle. Dean tied the knot and positioned the needle in his hand, piercing through the flesh.

He sized up the rest of his wounds in his mind, Sam forcing him to recite medical procedures on a extremely boring car ride finally being put to use.

A mash of purple and blue was starting to develop on the angel's left side, the two broken ribs evident from beneath his skin. A horribly dislocated shoulder and a concussion accompanying his injuries. He was glad that he was unconscious for this part.

Dean stuck the object through his skin again, a slight twitch of his finger signaling to him that he needed to get these processes done quick.

He rapidly sewed the rest of the flesh together, taking the soaked bandages from Sam and wrapping it around Cas's injuries.

Castiel's brow twitched in a painful expression, feeling the cleansing alcohol burn his skin.

The hunter then moved to his dislocated arm, gently wrapping the limp limb in his hands. He took a firm hold, clenched his teeth, and shoved the joint back into its socket.

He suddenly lurched upward, falling back down onto the couch as his chest heaved, his eyes moving violently underneath his lids.

The only good thing Dean could make out of this situation was that his friend was still closer to the land of the living.

Now all they could do, was sit, and wait.

Sam walked into the room without making a sound, pushing off the room's doorframe.

Dean had fallen asleep in the chair after a full three days and now eight hours with no shut-eye to speak of,

He had tried to ask him why he was acting in such a way, but he seemed to have a degree in avoiding these kinds of questions.

He was an awfully light sleeper but on average on most nights like this the sound of the Impala roaring to life wouldn't make him move an inch. But that still didn't stop Sam from moving as quiet as a mouse around his sleeping brother.

Crickets chirped softly as the quiet hum of the A/C could be heard.

He ever so slowly sat down in a pulled out chair, careful not to let the legs scrape on the wooden floor. Soft moonlight filtered through the window pane, illuminating the floating dust particles of a building that hadn't been used in months.

Then something pulled at Sam's gut, tugged at his inner workings of impulse. Something wasn't right. He averted his eyes to the windows, his body suddenly rigid and away from the chair. He scanned the windows, looking for any sights of supernatural activity despite the wind through the trees.

Nothing.

He got up from his seat, searching every window and sigil to see if they were written correctly, and of course they were.

But Sam didn't sleep that night, he had a family to protect, and that was exactly what he was going to do.

Dean woke to sunlight falling on his eyelids, shocking his brain into awareness.

Suddenly all of the events from the night previous ran their way through his mind. His eyes instantly shot open and flitted around the room for Castiel, finding him in the exact same place as he was the night before. The only movement he had made through the hours was his arm spread from the cushions, his face turned toward Dean's. It was as if Cas was still trying to be a guardian angel despite the obvious predicament at hand.

A slight movement caught his eye and his shot nerves made the assumption of an intruder, his hand instinctively slide down to where his gun was hidden.

But it was just Sam, not some bitch vampire who wanted a high from angel blood.

Sam had his face buried beneath the pages of a book, completely oblivious to his brother's reaction.

Dean tilted his head back up to the ceiling, fixing his gaze on the blades of an unmoving fan.

The sounds of the past evening wove through his mind, sending him plunging back to the hours before.

"Okay, Dean, I get it, I won't touch the wheel of the Impala ever again," Sam said sarcastically, sending his hands upward in defeat.

"Yeah you better not." I glared at him, eyes narrowed as I flicked a drop of dried blood from the hilt of my gun,"Next time Sammy, watch where you point the thing, preferably not at the hood, because y'know, there's something called an engine inside there."

My brother glared at me with his head angled down, "I'll make sure to tell the vamp that when it wants a snack."

I tilted my head towards my shoulder in mock irritation.

Suddenly a white light accompanied with the sound of cracking thunder severed the grey sky from the moon, sending my vision into crowds of blinding color.

What in the goody gumdrops of hell was that?

It was like God brought the sun down and shoved it into the world without thinking of the reprocussions which included retinal damage.

I put my forearm in front of my face, a shitty attempt to hide the burning light from my eyes. I squinted, putting a free hand out to get some sort of notion as to where I was. My hand touched the Impala, the familiar gloss from a coating of protective paint met my fingertips.

The sterile light flickered, making the sky adopt a navy blue as the pulses shot through the air.

The ball of fire plummeted downward, my eyes transfixed as it stabbed its way to the ground.

A shockwave radiated from the point of impact, sending particles of dirt up into the air. I waved the dust away, coughing as it tried to fill my lungs.

"Sam?" I called through the film of airborne filth, "Sam, you good?"

His attempts to expel the dirt from his lungs hung in the air, his paused words signaling his status.

"What was that?" He asked when he came into my line of sight.

I was about to speak when something tan in color descended from the clouds above. At first I thought it was some unfortunate bird that got hit and was having some sort of god awful seizure on the way down, but as my eyes focused on it, sudden realization hit me like a train.

It was Cas's coat.

Dean opened his eyes, confused because the scenery didn't match what he had seen. He blinked, realizing the had fallen asleep again.

He almost jumped out of his skin as Sam appeared in front of him.

"God dammit Sam."

His brother held up his hands, "Not my fault it looked like you were reliving every single horror movie you saw as a kid. And you looked pretty scarred Dean."

Jesus he hated those movies.

He never understood how holy water could kill a vampire. He would have nightmares for months afterward of demon-vamps running around possessing people and draining the life out of them.

Their father had used to shove them onto the couch and force them to watch the horror flicks so they wouldn't be as spooked when he took them out on hunts.

Freakin' demon bitches.

He wasn't going to sleep again, not after he had managed to do so for three days.

It was partially the reason he'd been an insomniac for the just of the week. He had been maliciously plagued with things he didn't want to remember again, and last night with Cas was one of them.

The angel had looked so human it freaked the hell out of him. Dean blinked again, trying to get the image of Cas of out his head.

The hunter straightened himself on the chair, adjusting his already crossed arms.

He blinked away the sleep that had managed to stay on the corners of his eyes as his eyes instinctually ran over the injured man in the room.

Castiel hadn't moved during the hours he had laid there, just his arm outstretched in a futile motion to protect.

Sam had just recently changed the bandages, most likely in an attempt to stay sane from the horrendous boredom that ailed him.

It wasn't like he couldn't read a book, just that he had read all of them here, and there weren't that many.

There was a sudden flicker, sudden flash of a feathery black that appeared behind Cas that it sent Dean rigid in his chair.

Sam must've seen it too, for he was beside Dean's chair in an instant.

A few grueling seconds passed before it appeared again, then again just as if a bulb was giving its last efforts to shine.

What appeared to both the brothers shocked them till their eyes were the size of the moon.

Great wings appeared before them, ebony with depth that no words could describe that looked so broken and beaten it was as if every feather was torn off one by one.

One avian limb was tucked neatly to the side, pressed up against the couch while the other spread from his back and leaned out toward the floor.

But that wasn't what gave Dean a jumpstart to his heart, not that the angel had wings, but that the tip of them stopped at his shin.

He could feel the feathers, could feel them pressing his jeans towards his skin.

Despite the evidence of their realism, he slowly put a hand out and touched it with his fingertips, slowly holding the wing in his hand as he pushed it upward toward its owner.

"This isn't good, Dean," Sam spoke, hands pressed together and up to his face Sherlock-style.

"He's loosing his grip on concealing his angelic properties. His wings show up, then from what I read, he slowly stops being able to speak the human language, English in this case. Then he reverts to the first language he ever knew."

"So you're basically saying he's gonna be an angelic tourist?" Dean asked, eyebrows raised.

Sam put his hands in his pockets, "Yeah pretty much."

A small noise sent the Winchester's heads snapping in the direction of the couch, making them lower their voices to the smallest interval they were capable of.

"Cas?" Sam asked in an almost silent whisper.

A beat of movement came from his face, his eyes scrunching up at the sudden pain of the lights plowed into his brain.

The headache pounded against his cranium, making it feel as if it was a fruit busting open with its red insides.

The voices said something again, but the noises were slurred and intelligible, as if his head was constantly being dunked underwater.

His eyes opened, revealing a ceiling made of timber, a contraption used for air circulation rotating its paddle-shaped blades.

Suddenly someone's face poked from the corner of his vision.

Dean.

That was Dean.

"Hey, Cas can you hear me?"

He managed a nod, forcing himself to swallow as his throat felt constricted beyond belief. Both movements sent a bought of nausea pushing it's way from his head down to his stomach, making the whole world spin in ways he didn't know it could.

Sam would've been there, leaning over the other side of the couch to see if Cas was alright, but the sight of his wings put chains on his feet.

It wasn't that he was shocked that an angel had wings, but that he saw them visibly attached to someone he felt like was a brother to him was just cool.

Castiel saw Sam's expression, "You can see them, can't you?"

Dean looked to his winged appendages and back to his face, "Yeah we can Cas."

He maneuvered his hands to support his back as he was about to push himself up, but he was forced back down by Dean.

"You shouldn't be moving for a while, Cas, you might rip your stitches."

Cas looked down, pain hitting him like a fired bullet. He could feel his broken ribs screaming at him to stop breathing. He could feel were his skin being pulled taught against the threads that held his life together.

The pounding in his skull had not ceased, it beat at its confounds like a caged animal, scratching at the walls.

He wondered how humans dealt with things like this, he had never had to deal with the everyday needs as long as Sam and Dean had. He could'nt even fathom how many peanut butter jars they had had to go through on their various times on the road.

Castiel hadn't realized he had closed his eyes again until he fell back into the void of sleep.

I don't know if I should make this a really crappy ending for a one-shot or continue with the story.

It basically depends on you guys, so if you could leave a review it would make my day! 3

If you do happen to have any questions, I'll include your username and question and answer them at the bottom of the next chapter ( if there is one ).

See you!

-Smokescreen38