A/N: Yeah, this chapter was hell. Ripped it to shreds half way in, but I'm happy with how it's turned out. Good news! I actually know where this is going now. And I should be updating the summary too, except that I suck at summaries so that might take a while. Also, I warn you here, this may be a bit confusing, and I am trying to put an actual plot into this (with mystery and all that nonsensical goodness). If you need to, just shoot my question and I'll try to answer it without spoiling anything. Anyways, when I said updates at least once a week...well I don't think I'll keep a really tight schedule. You're probably going to get more than one chapter a week, at least until school starts again. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, favorited or followed. I ask again that you R&R and Enjoy.


Dean wasn't always a quiet boy. When Mom was still around, he talked loudly, laughed loudly and smiled loudly. She liked to see him smile, and Dean liked to make her happy.

When Mom died, Dean was faced with John. Big, strong, silent John—Dad. He loved his father, he did, but with him there was pressure and expectations. To be a good son. Dean wanted to make him happy, just like he had with Mom, and the best way was to be all that Dad wanted. Strong. Quiet. Obedient.

Dean doesn't know when he lost that easy smile or the ability to laugh and play carefree like a child. He guesses it happened slowly. As if his father's expectations slowly drained it out of him, little by little, until all that was left was solider-like discipline.

Dean can't help but think, the way he is now, he wouldn't be able to make Mom smile anymore.


Dean sits at the kitchen table the day he rescues the boy across the street from the rain. He sits firmly the way Dad taught him to: hands clasped in front of him and back straight. His eyes are locked onto the table as the mysterious boy phones his "guardian." Dean is rigid, and Dad, who sits opposite to him at the table watching it all, would probably commend his discipline. But Dean knows that isn't the case. He is not stiff—he is frozen. Completely ensnared in the chaos of his thoughts, holding desperately to a calm façade (also from Dad) while raging inside.

He doesn't understand. Not any of it.

Dean doesn't understand why, when the car first pulled into the drive way across the street, he felt a jerk. Like some invisible thing went and kicked him right in the brain. At first he put it off. There was no plausible explanation, and he didn't want to waste time on the impossible. Besides, Sam needed to be fed. And Dean is good at ignoring things.

For as long as he could remember, Dean was ignoring things. Now it's mostly Dad's drinking, or the absence of Mom's pictures in the house, but there is more. Dean has…dreams. Not scary dreams like Sam's nightmares. Those shake his little brother in the middle of night. Have him crying and screaming bloody murder, thrashing about in his bed like something was trying to kill him.

No, Dean's dreams are different.

Dean dreams of fragments, of voices and people and scenes that are just too real to ignore. And when he wakes up, he's panting, lost for a moment in the false reality of his mind. Lost as to where he is or how he got there.

He dreams of cities overrun, corpses rotting in the streets. He dreams of gold eyes and the burn of white, shining wings on his retinas. He dreams of hot summer days and the feeling of wind through his hair, music playing quietly (or obnoxiously loud) in the background and the murmur of conversations he can never make out.

Dean tried to tell Mom about them when she was still alive, but she laughed, smoothed his hair down and said, "What a beautiful imagination my Dean has."

He refuses to talk to Dad about it. He isn't stupid.

So three weeks ago, when there's an inexplicable pull in his chest as the new neighbors pull up, he shoves it down and focuses on feeding Sammy. He turns away from the window (with a perfect view to that green house across the street), and starts making Sam's sandwich.

Except that, when he turns to grab a plate, he catches sight of the new neighbors.

Dean gets a glance at a messy black head of hair and he freezes. He can't really see his face. Just a vague pale blur, a black mess on top, blue dotted somewhere in the middle, but it's like he has double vision. There's an empty ringing in his ears, and a pain in the back of his head. He sees the boy getting out of the car, but there's a shadow of something else embossed over the scene. It's a different car, Dad's car, he realizes, and there's a tan shape getting out instead, extremely taller and slightly wider, but with the same mess of black on top, blue spotted somewhere in the middle.

Dean drops the plate, but barely notices.

The two pairs of blue eyes turn toward him, watching. Seeing. The shadow image flashes, so bright Dean actually shuts his eyes.

When he opens them again, it's gone. Only the small, thin boy, still staring. But then, a bearded man gets out of the driver's side, crosses in front of the car and grabs the boy's shoulders, practically dragging him to the door and inside the house.

It takes a second after their exit for Dean to realize Sam is shouting for him. At him. And pulling at his jeans. He blinks his eyes, suddenly bone tired, but pats Sammy on the head and pushes a reassuring, slightly shaky smile onto his face. After Sam quiets, he picks the plate off the ground and gets another for the sandwich.

Dean tries to fake his usual enthusiasm, but Sam doesn't seem to really buy it. They eat quietly, and when Sam gets up to play by himself (reading books, the nerd) Dean doesn't follow him.

He rises, puts the dishes away and quietly watches Sam from the safety of the hallway.

Until it's time to put him to bed, (and John is locked away in his room), Dean doesn't allow himself to truly freak out. But when the house is quiet and Dean is sitting on his bed, alone in his room, he does.

His thoughts race faster and faster from suppression, but it doesn't matter. There's no explanation. Nothing that could make sense. And Dean can't ask Dad. The man didn't believe in stupid things like phantom pains and hallucinations and dreams.

Dean would get in trouble.

So he keeps his mouth shut, and shoves the uncertainty, panic and confusion into a corner in his head. He pretends he cares nothing for the new neighbors across the street even as he can't stop thinking about the boy and the shadow man with the tan trench coat. They are a constant itch in the back of his head. Black hair. Sky eyes. Black hair. Sky eyes.

It's starting to drive him insane.

And Dean would get lost in it—the pull. The subtle attraction to the house across the street. He wouldn't realize he was gone until something jerked him out of it (like Sam almost getting run over three times).

Dean doesn't understand it.

And as Dad drove him home from school, he finds the strange boy sitting out in the rain on the grass.

It all goes downhill from there.

Dean can't stop himself from caring. The urge to run outside and wrap that boy up in the warmest blanket to take him inside is almost irrepressible. The itch turns into a burn.

Here, now in the kitchen with the strange boy standing behind him, that burn has faded into nothingness. When he looks at the boy he does not see phantom shadows. But that pull, that urge, doesn't go away like the itch. It strengthens. And Dean struggles to ignore it.

"Thank you," the boy says indifferently into the phone, "I will. Goodbye." There is the click as the plastic phone slides back onto its receiver.

Dean takes a deep breath.

Dad clears his throat. "So?"

When the boys speaks again, it comes inches from behind Dean's head. So close he almost jumps. "Mr. Bobby Singer will be back soon," is all he says.

Dad waits, but the boy doesn't expound. Dad purses his lips (Dean sees this even as he tries to avoid his gaze). "Fine." Then the scratch of his chair as he stands from the table. "I'll go check on Sammy." With an exasperated huff, Dad is gone.

Dean attempts to pick between three actions.

One: run to check on Sam (it is his job. Their Dad hasn't nursed either of his sons in years.

Two: turn to the boy and demand to know what the hell was going on.

Three: stay quiet and impassive and pack this all away (the boy, the pull, the dreams) until it all went away.

Then the boy sits down opposite of him, in Dad's vacated seat, and forces his hand. The worn knit blanket Dean threw over him as soon as he came in is slightly wet and falling off his narrow shoulders. His hair is dry (towel dried by Dean) and he's stopped shivering. "Hello Dean," he says.

Dean flinches. "How do you know my name?"

The boy frowns. "That is what your father called you. Am I wrong?"

Dean forces himself to relax. He's overreacting. "No no. That's my name." There are questions burning holes in the back of his throat, yet somehow the only one he manages to force out is, "Who are you?"

"Castiel," is the boy's immediate response.

In that second, the world splinters. The color leaks away. The lines fade. Dean is suddenly surrounded by shadows—blind.

"Yeah, I figured that much, I mean what are you?" a phantom voice whispers in the dark.

Another ghost replies resolutely, "I'm an Angel of the Lord."

Then it all sucks out like vacuum, blinking away in an instant. Dean is shoved back into reality, reeling.

He gasps.

He's had those dreams, like an odd meaningless patch-work quilt of sensation and flickering images, but nothing like this. Never like this.

Castiel lunges forward. Dean sees the action even as his eyes roll senselessly in their sockets.

"Dean? Dean. Look at me," Castiel hisses. He grabs Dean over the table by his shoulders.

The places where his hands touch burn. They sear like bare flesh on an open flames and the pain flashes bright in his eyes like fireworks. It brings him back.

He shoves away from the table, crouched over himself like a wounded animal. "Get away from me," he spits.

Castiel jerks back as if Dean's words are blows. His eyes are pulled wide, mouth tilting open at the corners. "Dean—"

Dean's mouth opens, seconds away from letting lose a volley of shouting, but suddenly there's a shrill scream from the telephone and the pressure of those words in his throat dies out.

Castiel is staring at him like the answers to everything are held in his eyes. He's half on the kitchen table, feet barely touching the floor. Dean has his arms wrapped around himself, trying to hold it all together. The only thing in his eyes is fear.

He swallows, then and with a voice reminiscent of a thousand commands from Dad, he orders, "Go get the phone."

At first, Castiel doesn't look like he'll listen. His face (smooth and rounded by vestiges of baby fat) is crumpled in frustration. Dean prepares to force another demand from his mouth, but then Castiel's expression melts. It just…disappears. In its place is a blank mask. There is no emotion in it. Just apathy. Dean shivers.

Castiel gets off the table and moves to the phone, brushing against Dean's arm as he walks. Dean squares his shoulders and pretends it doesn't bother him.

The ringing stops as he picks up the phone. There is a pause. Castiel mutters a swift, "Fine," then hangs up again.

"Mr. Bobby Singer has returned," he says.

Dean's arms tighten around him. He doesn't speak.

Castiel lets the silence hang. He leaves a wide opening for him, but Dean doesn't take it. He can't.

Castiel sighs, then mummers, "Goodbye, Dean." Then he is retracing his steps through the Winchester home (Dean can hear his soft footsteps) to the front of the house.

Dean doesn't let himself breathe again until he hears the door creak open then shut.