Prologue

"Are you going to finish that?" Dean's voice snaps Cas back to reality, and he stares down at his untouched pancakes, surely cold by now. The diner is loud, all clattering plates and cheerful banter, typical for a Saturday morning, and normally, Cas would have appreciated this display of undaluterated humanity. On this particular Saturday, however, he is more than a little lost in his own thoughts.

"No, Dean, I do not plan on finishing my pancakes." They're drenched in so much maple syrup that the edges are soggy and falling apart. His stomach turns just a little. "I don't require sustenence and besides... I do prefer cleaner foods."

Dean's chagrin is obvious, but he snatches up the plate and goes to town on it anyway. "You know man, cheeseburgers don't really count as a "clean" food and I seem to remember you eating several hundred of those." He says with a full mouth, a little trickle of syrup dribbling onto his chin. He doesn't bother to wipe it off before his next bite.

Cas sighs and leans against the fake wood panneling of the wall. He wishes Sam were here to put a damper on Dean's teasing, but he's back at the motel room doing research. In a way, he supposes that this illustrates the point that he has been pondering even more. He dislikes Dean's lack of manners, dislikes the way he eyes up everything that moves, and especially dislikes being put on the spot. It seems, more and more, that he dislikes every pillar of Dean's personality. And that, more than anything else, makes Castiel very anxious.

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Chapter One

Once upon a time, Dean has been everything that Cas needed. First, a leader, someone to fight behind that didn't send absent orders or just leave His children to make their own messes... catastrophic, planetary messes, as it turned out. He had followed Dean into battles big and small, until his allegiance had turned entirely.

And then, something happened. He began to ENJOY the time he spent with his makeshift Captain. He would flutter quietly into the backseat when Dean was driving alone, just to listen to his off key rendition of Sweet Home Alamaa before he realized Cas was there. He would accompany the brothers to bars, and occasionally brought food to their hotel room when they were too busy with research to leave. He was slowly adopted into their inner circle, and in exchange, got what he had wanted since he could remember: real friendship.

For a while, it has been enough. Dean had laughed with him, and at him, when he tried to human along to the radio. Sam had confided in him about all the things he was scared to tell his older brother, and Cas had helped him find the courage to do what he needed to do. They both teemed up to comfort him as his grace slowly waned. Their life was good. They would scout local papers, searching for the latest monster, and fought together to take them down. One particular hunt stuck out on Castiel's mind, a shining beacon of a memory, because it is also the night that his world shifted on its axis.

At first it seemed straightforward enough. Bodies had been popping up all over Bruno, Minnesota with their chests torn open and their hearts missing. "Not exactly genius level stuff" is how Dean described the case. After a day spent interviewing victims, it had been Cas who finally figured out the werewolf's identity; the younger sister of a prostitute who had been with all of the victims.

Dean had clapped him on the back as they were walking out of the older sister's house, and for some reason, the warmth of his hand stayed with Cas the whole drive back to the motel to meet up with Sam and gear up. He found himself smiling absently out the window at the scenery flying by. It wasn't until much later, after they had loaded the cartidges of their handguns with silver bullets and pealed out of the parking lot, that Cas noticed he was still thinking about Dean's hand on him.

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"Sam? SAM!?" The scream echoed off the brick old brick buildings, loud enough to wake the dead, and Cas's heart twisted in his chest. Dean's voice was unmistakable as it wrapped around his brother's name, and Castiel forced himself into a faster sprint, faster and faster until he could feel his human skin dissolve into energy and intention. What they had thought was a single werewolf turned out to be a pack, something they had never run into before, and they were ill-prepared. Sam was holding his own, if the rapid sound of gunshots were any indication, so Cas focused all of his intention on "DEAN!"

The yell ripped its way out of his throat as he forced himself back together, just in time to spin on his heel and knock the snarling girl behind him back a few feet. She was covered in blood, and there was flesh dangling between her teeth. Suddenly, the thought of having her within 100 miles of Dean was just too much, and he saw red. At one point, he would have been able to dissolve her with a snap of his fingers, but instead he pulled out his pistol and fired more rounds than were strickly neccesary into her body.

He found Dean 15 feet away, laying in a pool of his own blood, and blinking up at him frantically. Cas reached out two fingers to touch his forehead, willing more power into his body, praying to the God he abandoned to give him the strength to heal his friend. But his grace simply thrummed in his chest, a constant and glaring reminder of his rebellion.

"It's going to be okay, Dean." Cas said, softly, even though by now his eyes has shut and his head had slumped to the side. He pressing both his hands over the gashes in Dean's chest, before he swallowed down every shred of his tattered pride and screamed for Sam.

Sam rounded the corner like a bullet shot from a gun, and knelt next to his broken brother, a cacaphony of emotions playing across his face. His hands fluttered over Dean's torso, too big, and unsure of what to do. "Oh my god." Sam's voice broke. "Cas. Is he..."

Castiel felt the world faded around him as he watched blood spurt from between his pale fingers. The life was spilling out of Dean and onto the pavement, and there was no way he could stop it. He was the weakest he had ever been, and could feel the cold seeping through his trenchoat. The reality that his best friend might die on the ground in front of him was unbearable, and then like a sledgehammer the reality hit him. He had lost friends before. Every war in heaven had resulted in casualties, angels who he had known for millenia had been ripped to shreds right before his eyes, but he never felt lost the way that he did now, in this space between seconds.

He loved Dean. He was in love with Dean, and Dean was bleeding out, and he couldn't do it. In a moment of decision, Cas reached out with one hand, snagged Sam's, and slapped them both over Dean's heart before reaching deep inside himself, extracting the last of his grace from between his ribs, and vanishing with the brothers into the night.

It was the last thing he remembered before the expansive darkness bloomed inside his skull, and he was lost to the world.