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The darkness lifted into a muted grey light.

From very far away he thought he could hear someone counting.

He felt strange, dizzy. His head hurt. It was hard to see clearly, harder still to think. He was confused and disoriented. Everything was fuzzy. The after-effects of the drug they administered, perhaps.

He had no idea where he was, and for an instant he was gripped by sheer terror. Where was he? Where was everyone else? Why was it so quiet?

He steadied himself with a deep breath. His fear was irrational. He just needed to think his way through this.

Wherever he was, he was still in corporeal form. He could see his hands in the dim light, his legs, the non-descript garments the hospital had clothed him in.

But this didn't look like the hospital.

He lay on a cold stone floor. Blinking to clear the fog from his vision, he could see that he was surrounded by grey brick walls, about four feet away on all sides. Above him, he couldn't so much see as feel that the ceiling was very close, too low for him to stand. In the air hung the cloying thickness, the staleness, of cramped, closed-in space.

He was in a cell. The cell where his madness had been held.

A tremble coursed through his body. Fear. Fear of not knowing. Fear that he'd gotten things horribly wrong. Fear that if he was in here, then the madness was … out there…

Out there, where someone was definitely counting.

There was nothing in the cell with him. It was empty, and cold, and deliberately devoid of any distinction, any feature on which to rest his attention. It was designed to be blank. There was nothing on the walls. There was no door. But there was a window…

"…ninety-three…ninety-four…"

The voice was distinct now, as if someone had just turned up the volume.

It was through the glass-paneled opening in the wall in front of him that the light spilled in from outside. Whatever lay outside.

"…ninety-six…"

He shuffled quietly, carefully, along the floor toward the window as the counting continued—

"…ninety-nine…"

and peered through.

"One hundred!" bellowed Lucifer. "Ready or not, little brother, here I come!"

Outside the window was Castiel's hospital room. In an instant he took all of it in. The door was closed and the walls were still covered in his Enochian symbols (though they didn't look quite like the ones he had drawn). A plastic pitcher filled with flowers stood on his bedside table. An IV pole stood on the other side, connecting him to various drip-feeds. His body lay lifelessly in the bed, his face looking pale, gaunt, his eyes opened in a vacant, glazed stare, seeing nothing. Castiel thought the body in the bed looked dead.

But the figure hovering over it looked very much alive. "Come out come out wherever you are!" cried a malevolently grinning Lucifer. He began a mock-search of the room, pulling back the curtain that served as a door to the bathroom, checking behind chairs, ducking his head down to investigate under the bed, and Castiel edged to a corner of the window in order to watch discreetly.

Lucifer stood with his back to the window, sighed as if in defeat, and then very slowly turned around. And gazed directly at Castiel through the glass pane that separated them.

"Looks like I've got you," he said in a soft, singsongish lilt, lips stretching across his teeth in a cold, savage leer, his eyes sparkling with spiteful glee. Castiel's breath caught.

As his brother moved closer to the window, Castiel scrambled backward along the floor, cowering into the far corner.

"Oh come on, Cassie," said Lucifer, pressing his face against the glass. "Don't be like that. You'll hurt my feelings."

Castiel could only stare at the face staring in at him. He felt terrified in a way he'd never felt terror before, and he understood that it wasn't entirely his own, that this was at least in part Sam's fear. But that understanding wasn't helping now.

"I just want to catch up, that's all. I mean, how long has it been? Don't you wanna talk? Maybe have one of those sweet brotherly bonding moments?" He cupped his hands around his face as he peered in, impaling Castiel to the wall with his glare. "I know you always reserved those moments for your precious Dean. But you know what?" He lowered his voice apologetically. "You were never that precious to him, kiddo. And these days… oh, how do I put this delicately?" He pulled his hands away and flashed a smile at his brother. "He despises you."

Castiel shut his eyes.

"But you know that, don't you?" he said lightly. And waited for an answer.

"You know he hates you. Don't you." Less lightly this time.

Castiel realized dimly that his entire body was shaking.

"Answer me, Cassie."

Castiel tried desperately to focus on something else, anything else, an image, a thought, a prayer—

"ANSWER ME!"

"Yes!" cried Castiel. "I know!"

"You know what?"

"I know that Dean hates me! I know…" And he pulled himself into a tight, trembling ball on the cold floor, what humans referred to as a fetal position.

"Good," soothed Lucifer. "Now doesn't that feel better?" He paused. "I mean, it answers so many questions. Why he left you here, why he never came back… Hey. Look at me."

Castiel jolted with the sudden thundering bang of something slamming against the wall, presumably his brother's fist.

"Look at me when I talk to you!" he shouted, his voice an explosion in the tiny cell.

Castiel did as told, sat up and pressed himself so tightly against the back wall that it hurt, and met Lucifer's burning eyes.

"It's just the polite thing to do," Lucifer cooed in that singsong voice again. The shifting extremes of tone were deliberate, Castiel knew, designed to destabilize him. But once again, understanding didn't help. "I mean, who the heck raised you with manners like that?" He winked at Castiel and grinned. "Speaking of manners, do you realize you haven't invited me in yet? That's cold. Although I have to admit..." and he squinted into the cell's darkness, "it does look a little cramped in there. Looks none too comfy neither. So, here's a thought." He took a step back and threw his arms out to his sides. "Why don't you come out here?"

Castiel inadvertently turned his head away.

"Don't look away from me, little brother," threatened Lucifer icily. "I can make things even worse for you in there."

Castiel complied miserably, helplessly, and Lucifer continued without missing a beat. "But if you come out here, you don't have to worry about that. You'll have all this space, we can cuddle up together on a nice warm bed … we'll talk, we'll laugh, we'll cry …"

His features softened now, his gaze resting on the imprisoned angel with an expression of sincerity, of sympathy. "Your friends have abandoned you, Castiel. Our father gave up on you long ago. Our brothers and sisters … well, the ones you didn't deep-fry are scattered to the four corners, and too terrified to come anywhere near you again." He drew close to the window, his voice soft and resonant with compassion. "But I'm here. And I won't leave you. I wouldn't do that to you, not after everything you've been through. Besides, I'm not just family. I'm your big brother. And someone's got to look out for you." He tipped his forehead against the glass, and Castiel felt strangely transfixed by the soft glow of his eyes. "We have so much to talk about, Cassie, there's so much I want to tell you. Let me be your brother. Let me help you. Please. Come on out."

Castiel lifted an arm and gestured to the walls surrounding him, as he pushed himself back even further into the one behind him, as if it might give way and he could disappear into it. "I … can't," he replied brokenly.

Lucifer smiled, and it almost seemed affectionate. "You know, I've always found that kind of endearing. The way you sometimes forget just how powerful you are."

Castiel merely stared at him, uncomprehending.

"You're not trapped in there, Cassie. If you want out, all you have to do is decide." He watched him, and Castiel could see tiny daggers of flame leaping across his retinas, casting a flickering red glow across the walls of his cell. "So go on. Decide."

The moment stretched, and Castiel felt frozen. He knew he should speak. He should state his resolve. He should be so much stronger than this…

And then his brother started laughing, softly. "Ah, look at you. Shivering in the headlights. Poor little angel." He clicked his tongue and tilted his head. "I wonder what it is you're so afraid of?" But Castiel could see from the fire dancing in his brother's eyes that he didn't wonder at all. That he knew exactly what Castiel should fear. "I truly do not want to hurt you. And I certainly don't want to see you reduced to a drooling vegetable. All I want is to bring you back to the human fold, Cassie. Back to the world."

Castiel could hear the truth in his words, and it sent a chill through his body.

"But I can wait," Lucifer said brightly. "I'm a patient guy. And there's no rush. We've got until—" and he glanced at the oversized watch that suddenly appeared on his wrist, then beamed at Castiel, "—the end of time."

And with that the laughter returned, this time harsh and mocking and vicious, and rising in decibel level as Castiel cringed from its sound, until the volume grew to a deafening, unbearable roar that shook the cell walls and rattled its window, and for one desperate moment Castiel was sure it would shatter. He cowered in the corner, pressing his hands uselessly against his ears, unable to look away from the monster on the other side of the glass.

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