Author's Note: As I post this chapter, the US, especially our LGBTQ+ and Latinx communities, are still reeling from the shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. My LGBTQ+, Latinx, and people of color SPN Family members, I am sorrier than I can express that you cannot feel safe, cannot feel like human beings, in your own country. That you must fear not only for your dignity, but for your lives, even in your own safe spaces and places of refuge. I am angry that my queer, Muslim friends are having their own identities pitted against each other. I am sickened that this is still happening in 2016. I mourn with you and I will fight with you, love with you, and live with you. Not just today or this week or this month, but every day. We are the Supernatural Family. We are Fandom. We are Human. All of us. And Love is Love.

May you all have an angel of your shoulder when you most need one, and be someone else's angel in their time of need.

You are not alone.

-SQ

Disclaimer: Supernatural began in 2005. In 2005 I was 12, and you don't want to read the things I was writing then, believe me

Chapter One: A Winged Messenger

"Anything yet?"

Sam shook his head. "Nothing that points to any more people running around without their souls."

"And no more Lizzie Borden sightings?"

"None of those either. We don't even know what Amara looks like anymore. She could have gotten older again since the last time we saw her."

"Man, that's just weird," said Dean. "I miss good old fashioned monsters."

"We'll find her, Dean. She can't hide forever."

Dean though of the woman he had seen back in Superior, and the veiled promise she had seemed to make him. "Yeah, I know. It's the part that comes after I'm worried about."

Sam pushed his computer away, blinking to focus his tired eyes. "Any word from Crowley?"

"Nada. Rowena?"

"Radio silence," said Sam.

Dean huffed. "Typical."

"Have you tried contacting—" Sam started hesitantly.

"We're out of beer." said Dean loudly, slamming the refrigerator door shut. "I'm gonna make a run to the store, need anything?"

Sam sighed. "A beer sounds good, yeah. And pick up some dinner while you're out."

"Will do."

*****SPN*****

The Darkness may have been loosed upon the world, but at least they still had burgers and beer, thought Dean as he placed the takeout bag and the six pack in the passenger seat of his Baby.

"Dean Winchester."

Dean turned around and nearly jumped. Scant inches from him was a small, dark man, who was looking at him with an intense expression that gave him the creeps.

"Jesus."

"No," said the man, sounding slightly confused. "Hannah."

Dean quirked an eyebrow. "Nice name."

The joke obviously went over the man's head. "Castiel is in trouble."

Dean felt as though about 500 volts of electricity had been shot through him. "What do you mean, in trouble?" he demanded. "What kind of trouble? Where is he?"

"The situation is...urgent," said Hannah, who Dean now remembered as one of Cas' little angel friends, though the last time he'd seen her she'd been wearing a chick. "It took me longer than desirable for me to find you." He sounded annoyed.

"What situation?" growled Dean. "Where. Is. Cas?"

Hannah shook his head. "I can't tell you. I shouldn't even be here."

The angel, who had been making moves to leave, suddenly found herself hoisted up by her collar. "Now you listen here, you son of a bitch, you don't come waltzing your feathery ass down here telling me Cas is in trouble and then not tell me where he is."

Hannah's vessel's Adam's apple bobbed, but his eyes flashed with righteous anger and, unless Dean was mistaken, a hint of bitter satisfaction, as though Hannah had just had an unpleasant theory confirmed. "He's in Seattle, I can't tell you any more than that, I'm sorry." And with that she vanished.

"Son of a bitch!" said Dean, finding himself clutching empty air. "Why do I always have to clean up your messes?" And whether he was talking specifically to Castiel or to angels in general was anyone's guess.

*****SPN*****

Dean slammed the front door of the bunker so hard that Sam's mug of tea (and really, Sam, tea?) fell off the table and shattered, earning Dean a reproachful look.

"Cas is in trouble."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "So you're acknowledging his existence again?"

Dean glared at his brother. "It's not funny, Sam. Cas' angel girlfriend, that Hannah chick, only this time she was a dude, just flew in to tell me Cas is in trouble in Seattle, and apparently 'the situation is urgent,'" he said, doing his best angel impression and placing air quotes around the phrase.

"Whoa, slow down," said Sam, standing up, broken mug forgotten. "What else did she tell you?"

"Nothing! The son of a bitch pulled a fast one before I could get anything else out of him."

"Well," said Sam after a beat of tense silence, "I guess we're going to Seattle."

"Damn straight we are," said Dean. "Get your raincoat, dinner's waiting in the car."

*****SPN*****

Just over twenty-six hours later, the Impala skidded into a parking spot near a seedy looking motel a ways north of downtown Seattle, Dean and Sam having driven through the night to get there.

"Seriously!" said Dean, climbing out of the car and slamming the driver's side door. "There is nowhere to park in this city!"

"It is the fastest growing city in America," said Sam.

The look Dean gave him was a pretty good imitation of his own bitch face. "And apparently the one with the most traffic." Dean turned his glare on the cars going by down the main drag. "How are we supposed to find Cas in this shitshow?"

"I kinda like it," said Sam. "Though I could do without the giant weed billboards."

"At least there's one redeeming feature."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean, you don't even smoke."

"Who knows, I might; it's legal here. Cas would probably like it."

Sam gave him a funny look.

"Nevermind," said Dean. Then, "Dammit, where is he?"

Sam ran a hand through his hair. "I dunno, Dean, we don't have much to go on."

"Well then, let's find something!" Dean stalked into the motel, Sam following behind.

The girl behind the desk looked Dean up and down as she ran his fake credit card to pay for the room.

"Hello, Mr." she squinted at his ID, "Hendrix. Will there be ladies joining you two Johns, or are you the whole party?"

"There is no party," said Dean, as Sam sniggered. "My brother and I just need a room for the night. To sleep in."

As Dean collected the room key and restowed his wallet, the girl leaned over the desk and slipped a card into Sam's jacket pocket. "In case you change your mind."

*****SPN*****

When they got up to the room, Sam pulled out the card and turned it over.

"Peachy Paradise," he read aloud. "Personal, Private Pleasure. That's a lot Ps."

"You can pleasure your P after we find Cas," said Dean. "Right now you hit the computer, see what you can dig up. I'm gonna go see if any of the locals have noticed anything out of the ordinary."

"How come you get to have all the fun and I have to stay cooped up here in the motel?" Sam complained.

"Because that's what you do," said Dean. "I'm the agent, you're the squint."

"I'm the what?"

"Man, you need to watch more TV."

*****SPN*****

"Any luck?" asked Sam, when Dean returned to the motel several hours later.

"Loads, if we were looking for Sasquatch," said Dean, pulling a beer out of the fridge and straddling the free chair, "but zilch on angels."

Sam gave Dean a reproachful look. "Dean, you were just at the bar."

"Yeah, well, I need another one." He took a long swallow. "How about you? Did you find anything?"

"Yes and no," said Sam, turning back to his laptop. "I didn't find any mention of angelic disturbances, but if Cas is being kept hidden somewhere in Seattle, I have a pretty good idea of where that might be. Take a look."

Dean scooted his chair closer to the computer. "What's that?" he asked Sam, using the hand not holding his beer to gesture toward the webpage his brother had pulled up on the screen. "Bill Speidel's World Famous Underground Tour? Sounds like a tourist trap if I ever saw one."

"It's one of Seattle's main tourist attractions," confirmed Sam. "There's actually some interesting history attached to it. Apparently the entire city burnt to the ground in 1889, and what's here now was all built on top of it. This company offers guided tours through certain sections of the old Seattle, but I'm betting there's a lot more down there than even most of the locals know about."

"Sounds like a good start," said Dean, standing up and tossing his beer bottle in the trash.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," said Sam. "Hold on. First of all, this is Seattle, recycle that. Second, it's the middle of the night and you've barely slept in two days. Neither of us has. I for one want to get some shut eye before we go digging around in the bowels of old Seattle." When Dean opened his mouth to protest, Sam continued, "Besides, it's going to be a lot easier to wait until morning, buy a couple of tour tickets, and then slip away from the group than to find a way down there on our own in the middle of the night. How well do you know Seattle?"

Dean glared at his brother, but had to admit that he had a point. "First thing in the morning, then," said Dean, tossing his jacket on the back of the chair and stalking to the bathroom.

"Tours start at nine am!" Sam called after him.

*****SPN*****

At eight forty-five the next morning, Sam and Dean were huddled under a dripping awning outside Doc Maynard's Public House with four stubbornly chipper Japanese tourists who were busily snapping pictures of the surrounding, rain-drenched square.

At eight fifty-seven, a middle-aged man in a blue rain slicker jogged up to them. "Sorry I'm running late, construction on 99," he said, as though that explained everything. "Everyone ready to go?"

The group collectively nodded, the guide collected their tickets, and they set off through the persistent drizzle.

Sam felt a little sorry for the tour guide, who was animatedly narrating the history of Seattle to the raindrops. The Japanese tourists seemed to be too busy taking selfies and talking amongst themselves in Japanese to possibly be absorbing any of the information being conveyed to them in English. As for Sam and Dean, they had more pressing concerns on their minds than the history of modern plumbing. Though Dean couldn't suppress a snort about Thomas and his Crapper.

"I wish the group was bigger," Dean groused, eyeing the four diminutive twenty-somethings in the tunnel in front of them. "And taller."

"It's ten o'clock on a rainy Thursday morning in September," said Sam. "What did you expect?"

"I dunno, don't they take school groups to these kinds of things sometimes?"

"Yeah, because we wouldn't stick out there at all."

"Oh shut up."

*****SPN*****

About halfway through the tour, the boys finally got their opportunity to slip away from the group. When the guide and the tourists turned left, Sam and Dean veered right, ignoring the plywood barrier and the "Do Not Enter" sign, and found themselves in a much darker, danker, and obviously unfrequented part of underground Seattle.

"What exactly are we looking for?" asked Sam, pulling out his flashlight and squinting into the shadows.

"Anything angelic or weird," said Dean. "Or a sign saying, 'Castiel, Angel of the Lord, this way."

Sam snorted. "Well, if someone is keeping Cas here, or if he's hiding from someone, he's likely to be as far from the tour route as possible."

Dean grunted his agreement and led the way deeper into the tunnels.

They saw nothing out of the ordinary for over an hour. Dean grew more and more frustrated with each fruitless corner they turned. They were about to turn back from yet another dead end when Sam held up a hand, then, realizing that his brother couldn't see him in the darkness, called out, "Dean, wait. I think I found something."

Dean spun back around and squinted together with Sam at the seemingly solid dirt wall.

"This is Enochian," he breathed.

Sam nodded. "It's so faint I almost missed it."

"Do you think we can dig through here without bringing a crapload of dirt down on our heads?"

"There's one way to find out."

*****SPN*****

The dirt did come down on their heads, but there was significantly less of it than they had expected. When the dust cleared, they found themselves staring down another long tunnel. Sam and Dean looked at each other. Neither of them said anything, neither of them had to; they could both hear the indistinct but unmistakable sound of voices coming from the far end of the tunnel.

Silently, Dean jerked his head. Sam nodded in agreement and both Winchesters set off in the direction of the sound.

"He's not going to tell you anything. I don't think he's capable of telling you anything anymore."

"That's Hannah," Dean mouthed to Sam.

"And it's obvious no one's going to come for him," the voice that belonged to Hannah continued. "So why keep doing this? What's the point?"

"As an example," said a second voice. "And because he deserves it."

The voices faded. It seemed that their owners had exited whatever room lay at the end of the tunnel.

Sam and Dean rounded the corner and stepped into what was unmistakably a torture chamber. A chill went up Dean's spine.

"Cas?"

There was no answer. Dean crossed the room and bent to examine a nasty looking contraption that looked unsettling like a hat that screwed directly into your skull. It appeared to be broken. There was a creak outside the door; the room's former occupants were returning.

"Dean!" hissed Sam, pulling his brother behind a broken table that was propped up against the wall.

The door at the other end of the room opened and two men entered, dragging something between them. One of the men stopped to shut the door while his partner maneuvered the object, or rather the figure, for that's what it was, into a chair. This was made difficult by something long and dark (a cloak?) extending from the figure's shoulders all the way to the ground.

The door secure, the first man grabbed the black material and stretched it out from his captive's back, pinning both ends to the wall behind the chair. The seated person flinched and moaned as the pins went in, straining away from the restraints that bound him to his seat.

"Dean" Sam breathed in a horrified whisper, "they're wings."

Dean's stomach dropped to the floor. He felt like he was going to throw up. Wings. No. No.

Dean didn't realize he'd spoken the word aloud until the two men turned toward the table concealing Sam and himself from view.

"Who's there?"

Knowing they had about half a second before they lost the element of surprise, Sam launched himself out from behind the table, straight at the man who had bound the winged, trenchcoated being to the chair. Dean was right behind him, a projectile of single-minded fury aimed at the sadistic bastard who had just pinned the captive angel's wings to the wall.

Sam's target stumbled back as six feet, four inches of battle-ready hunter slammed into him. The two men went down, rolling head over heels on the dirt floor. The other man was surprisingly strong for his size and Sam found himself at least evenly matched, even with size and surprise in his favor.

Dean's opponent had had a fraction of a second more time to brace himself for the impact, and Dean found his knife locked hilt to hilt with an angel blade.

"Sam," he grunted, "a little help here!"

"Sorry, got my hands full!" panted Sam, trying and failing to pin his own opponent to the ground.

"The Winchesters," sneered the angel currently locked in combat with Dean. "A little late to the party, aren't you?"

"Fuck you, you son of a bitch," said Dean, aiming a punch at the angel's smirking face.

"Ah, ah, ah," said the sadistic douchebag, taking a step back and wagging an infuriating finger in front of Dean's nose. He lifted his hand, intending to smite Dean, but was distracted by something behind the hunter.

Dean risked a glance over his shoulder and saw the angel Hannah standing in the doorway, taking in the scene.

"Hannah, help me," said Dean.

"Hannah, finish him!" shouted Sadistic Douchebag.

Hannah hesitated.

Dean took the opportunity presented by his opponent's momentary lapse of attention to wrench the angel's arm behind his back, bringing his knife to the man's throat. At least that was his intention. He miscalculated the angle, however, and received an elbow to the gut that left him doubled over, gasping for breath. He looked up in time to see an angel blade descending toward him, just like he had once born down on Castiel with his own weapon. Then suddenly Hannah was between them.

"Get Castiel," she said, as the blade pierced her body.

Dean shielded his eyes against the blaze of light, and when his vision cleared, all that was left of Hannah, angel of the Lord, was an empty vessel and vast, black wing prints charred into the ground at his feet.

Hannah's killer spat casually on her body. "What a waste." He looked up at Dean, his expression almost bored. "I'm still going to kill you, of course."

"I don't think so," said Sam from behind him, and sheathed his own dispatched adversary's angel blade between his comrade's shoulders.

"Thanks," said Dean, wiping blood from his cheek.

"Don't mention it."

Dean looked toward the figure in the chair and for a moment the sight of the black wings stretched out to either side froze his blood in his veins, before he remembered that they were real and not the charred remains of a snuffed out Grace.

Dean practically ran across the room to the humanoid form secured to the chair. The angel was in bad shape. His face was a mass of cuts and bruises, his clothes stained, ripped, and burned in several dozen places. And while Dean was no expert, he was pretty sure Castiel's wings weren't even supposed to be visible, let alone hanging from the wall in that twisted manner. The wall, shit! Dean hurriedly withdrew the pins fastening Castiel's wings to the wall like a giant, grotesque butterfly. The angel groaned and Dean dropped to his knees in front of him, taking his friend's lacerated face between his shaking hands.

"Cas?" he said, his voice breaking. "Cas, buddy, it's me. Dammit, what did those bastards do to you?"

Castiel gritted his teeth and blinked, as though trying to bring Dean's face into focus. He dragged his tongue over his parched lips, summonsing enough moisture for one, gut-wrenching syllable.

"Dean."

AN: Thank you so much for reading this. I know you are; I can see it in my stats. I'm not sure how the Supernatural Fandom is as far as reviews go, I know every fandom s different and this one is busy doing so many wonderful things, but one of my favorite parts of writing fanfiction is connecting with my readers. Love to hear from you, to talk to you, especially in a fandom such as this, where we are so much more than people who happen to like the same TV show. So please, if you can spare a minute, shoot me a review and let me know what you think.

-SQ