"When your heart's on fire, you must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes"
Dean figured that if the ritual worked for Balthazar, it would work for Cas. An angel is an angel is an angel, right? He gathered the components together, grabbed a jug of holy oil out of the trunk of the Impala, and got to work.
"... SEE AH-EFF-FAH ZOAD-EE-ZOAD-OH-PEH!" Dean bellowed into the emptiness of the room as he finished the ritual.
Hands shaking, Dean finished the ritual and waited. Waited. And waited some more. The only thing that calmed him was the thought that Cas had kept him waiting many, many times before.
"Hell, he's kept me waiting since the day we met," Dean muttered to himself, thinking back on his first encounter with the trenchcoat-clad angel, in a rickety old barn in the middle of nowhere. Tears stung his eyes as he reflected on prayer upon unanswered prayer, words left unspoken that he would speak in a heartbeat if only he heard—
The swift sound of fluttering wings echoed in the near empty room of the compound. All thought left Dean's mind as he looked up and took in the sight of the long-lost angel. His angel.
"Cas—," he barely managed to choke out.
Castiel looked around the room in bewilderment until his eyes settled on his charge.
"Hello, Dean."
The familiar phrase was music to Dean's ears, yet the sound of it was heartbreaking because of the time it had taken for those words to finally reach him again.
"Wh-where have you brought me? How did you reach me?"
"Well, I kinda had to cheat a little."
Shame crept across Dean's face as he stepped aside to reveal the table on which his ritual materials rested. He braced himself for the wave of holy fury he was sure would follow as Castiel stared intently at the bowl in the center of the table. When he finally spoke, it was with an air of pride in his friend.
"Leave it to Dean Winchester to drag me here by any means necessary," Cas chuckled, though his smile didn't quite reach his eyes.
Dean allowed himself a small grin that quickly faded as he took a closer look at the angel standing before him. The bags beneath his eyes—those hollow, hunted eyes—were darker than Dean had ever seen them. It filled him with a sense of dread that he seldom felt. That name played on the edges of his mind again. Naomi.
"Who?" Cas questioned.
Dean started, realizing that he had spoken the offending name aloud.
"Naomi," he repeated. "Who is she?"
Cas simply stared at Dean, puzzled. That name. He had heard the name before, from Samandriel. But Castiel's mind was walled off from its owner. Naomi's power was such that the angel was prevented from knowing the true nature of his captor's... training.
"You need to move beyond these ridiculous human-bred emotions, Castiel!" the Woman snips as she stands towering above her pupil. "He's one man. You have smitten countless hundreds of our brothers and sisters. Surely you can kill one man."
Castiel crouches on the smooth tile floor of the seemingly endless warehouse, doubled over and nauseous. After the fifteenth Dean today, on this first of the many days to follow, he would have given anything to lay down and die along with the carbon copies of the man he was once sent to save. He is wrecked, clothes slick with blood from the countless hours of slaughter. The Deans each beg and plead with him, nothing quelling their pleas. Nothing, that is, except the blood that chokes them, filling their throats as they lay bleeding on the hard, sterile floor. Every word from every Dean is a piercing wound to Castiel's too-big heart. He runs them all through with his angel blade, the Woman tightly gripping his arm and press-ganging him through the motions for as many kills as it takes for Castiel to do it himself.
"...but he is the Righteous Man...," Castiel chokes as bile rises to the edge of his throat.
The Woman visibly bristles as she hauls her pupil to his feet.
"Nothing righteous has ever come from that disaster of a man. The quicker you learn that, the easier your lessons will become."
And she is gone. The lights fade to a dimness that strains Castiel's eyes.
And Dean #16 is hiding in the shadows, ripe for demise.
"...tiel! Earth to Castiel!"
At the sound of his name, Cas snapped to attention, the blank expression that he adopted startling Dean. The pull of a far stronger power than Castiel's threatened to wrench the newly-freed angel from the safety of the compound.
"Snap out of it, man! You gotta stay with me, Cas!"
"My apologies, Dean. I'm having trouble focusing," Castiel explained, shaking his head as if to wake himself from a trance. "I feel as though I'm being pulled away from here. ...Away from you." The angel's eyes were fixed to the floor as he spoke, and he noticed that some bits of that floor had more of a sheen to them than others. Holy oil. He began to step forward.
"Lucky for you, I got a way to keep you here," Dean softly growled.
The smell of the holy oil prickled Castiel's nose. Before he could speak, Dean dropped the lighter. A ring of fire surrounded the angel, trapping him. Cas stepped back quickly to avoid the rising flames that threaten to set his vessel's clothes aflame.
Dean hadn't wanted it to come to this. To have to sequester his closest friend using the one method he knew would force him to stay put. But this was the way it had to be. Dean couldn't handle another day of empty, unanswered prayers whispered in the night. He could no long bear the thought of being without Castiel.
His angel.
His guardian.
His friend.