Title: I Can't Breathe But I Still Fight While I Can Fight
Author: HigherMagic
Rating: PG-15
Pairings/Characters: Dean/Castiel
Spoilers: End of 6x22
Warnings: angst, betrayal, drama, dub-con, mpreg, God!Cas, character death, blood!play
Word Count: ~3,000
Summary: Dean
Notes: Unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own.
THIS IS WHERE IT STARTS GETTING REALLY DARK. JUST SO YOU KNOW.
Also, hate this chapter – hasn't lived up to my aspirations and expectations. Oh well.


"Do you swear your loyalty and love to the new God?"

Sariel growled, the Archangel's glowing blade sliding into his palm as he backed away defensively from Castiel, millions of wings flaring up around him. The Angel – God – cocked his head to one side, the fingers of his right hand twitching, as he used to when he would summon his blade from his sleeve, hidden from sight until in use. However, no blade slid into his hand. Nothing changed about him. Nothing at all.

"You are no God of mine," the Archangel snarled, righteous anger flashing in his golden-brown eyes, his feathers bristling, but the layers of soft feathers and Grace-strengthened wings covered with the metal of Angel blades seemed small and insignificant, confronted with Castiel's. The creature still had wings – two of them. Here, on the plane of Heaven, they were out, on display.

They were not made of iron, but they looked like that. They were not made of silver, but they shone like silver, with veins of different shades of grey – titanium and platinum and as-of-yet undiscovered elements, greys mixing on greys. Before Castiel had opened the door to Purgatory, his wings had been black – rich and smooth and sleek, almost blue. Now they were flat and sharp – they were not beautiful but they were awe-inspiring. They were not attractive, but they were magnetic. They had a pull to them.

The razor-tipped feathers bristled slightly at the Archangel's aggressive display, but Castiel's demeanor did not change. The creature shook his head, sighing a little, and averted his gaze to his feet, looking for all the world like the contrite, naïve little Seraph that had first been ordered to retrieve a necessary soul from Hell.

Sariel, just as Castiel knew he would, took advantage of the creature's averted gaze, and attacked, launching himself towards the creature with an inarticulate cry.

Several things happened at once. Castiel's head snapped up, Sariel's blade came down towards him, and then everything stopped. The blade had been aimed for Castiel's heart, and the creature reached up, his left hand closing with a deadly, crushing grip around Sariel's wrist. There was no expression on Castiel's face as he jerked his grip, tilting his hand so the blade fell out of Sariel's limp hand and the Archangel was forced to kneel on the ground. The Archangel growled, baring his teeth in defiance at Castiel, and the new God cocked his head.

"This could have been avoided," he whispered. He and Sariel had never been close – Sariel was an Archangel and Castiel a lowly Seraph. They had never crossed paths, but Castiel still felt a small amount of tenderness for the weak creature he had once been – a Seraph to a human to an Archangel to a God, and he felt a little amount of compassion for Sariel, as one might do to a pet.

He free hand reached up, cupping the side of who had once been his Brother's face, and he cocked his head the other way, eyes flashing, black and abyssal. His mouth twisted as though he was having an argument in his head, and was losing.

"Will you swear your loyalty and love to me, Brother?" he asked, making his voice softer, more coaxing, leading the lamb to slaughter. Sariel's fists clenched, his wings bristled, and he met Castiel's fathomless eyes. In them he saw all the souls of the damned, everything he had ever cast down or seen cast down.

He shook his head. Castiel's mouth twisted again and then his expression went curiously blank. "You are no Brother of mine," Sariel whispered, knowing he was about to die. It was inevitable. Unavoidable.

Castiel sighed, as though he regretted what he had to do, but his eyes told a different story. In them was the vicious triumph of a near-kill, of millions upon millions of creatures that were bent on reigning destruction and terror on living beings, given another chance. Castiel's fingers twitched on Sariel's face and around his wrist, crushing the bone further.

The creatures champed at the bit for the kill.

"Then you are of no use to me," he replied in a sad monotone, and his right wing curved forward, millions of tiny pieces of metal clinking together as they moved. Castiel knelt down so he was on Sariel's level, his very gaze freezing the Archangel in place as he dropped Sariel's useless hand, and held his face. His wing pressed on the Archangel's neck as he kissed Sariel – a kiss of benediction, of forgiveness for the Archangel's wrongs – and when he forced his left wing through the Archangel's heart; he swallowed the fleeing Grace, taking Sariel's power into himself to satisfy the gnawing hunger of the millions of creatures inside of him.

They howled and cheered at the taste of power, as Sariel's limp body slumped against Castiel's. Blood ran from the centre of his chest and from his neck as Castiel stood up, and there was blood on his hands. They twitched again. The creatures inside of Castiel panted for more.

He knelt down. Sariel's chest cavity had been split in two by the force of Castiel's iron-silver wings. The heart, the place where his Grace had been, welled up with blood like an offering in a sacrificial bowl. Castiel raised his head, unwilling to be caught off-guard in such a vulnerable position, before he cupped his hands together and lowered them into the slowly growing pool of blood. Inside of his head, millions of voices chanted and jeered him on, pressing against the boundaries of his vessel, guiding his hands as he raised them to his lips and sipped at the blood. The iron tang of it was like a balm, sating the foremost voices, but more took their place, all vying for their taste of blood. Unwilling and unable to deny them, Castiel sipped again at the small pool of blood in his hands, feeling some of it drip through his fingers and down his wrists, staining his skin and clothes. He was kneeling in blood, smelling it, tasting it, and he needed more. He reached down to take more into his hands, but it wasn't enough. The vampires and Djinni and all other blood-sucking souls demanded more, and he leaned down, breathing heavily, eyes black with no blue left in them and only the thinnest amount of white, and he wrenched open Sariel's chest cavity, sucking at the blood as though it were water in a drought. He drank it down, feeling it sate himself, the amount of pleasure in those souls' satisfaction felt like an orgasm, felt like he was touching Grace with God all over again, before everything went wrong.

Castiel was sobbing as he drank, tears marring the perfect swirling design of blood on his face, down his neck, on his hands and forearms. His shoulders shook, making the iron feathers rustle and clatter around him, deafening and harsh, and he moved his wings to cover himself and that of the corpse of his fallen Brother, hiding them both from sight. He wasn't sure why he was crying, for he didn't feel any overwhelming sorrow in his heart. He cried and he consumed. The werewolves demanded the heart. He took it. The ghouls yowled for flesh. He took it. He took it all.

When he was done, there was nothing left except a small patch of bloodstain. Castiel had devoured everything else.


Castiel appeared to Dean again that night. In the dream, Dean was at an amusement park. There were brightly-colored roller coasters and laughing children and teenagers running around, eating food the color of a cloudless sky. Music, raucous and varied, blared from a speaker system on every stand, creating one deafening cacophony of sound.

Dean was on a bench by the public toilets. Castiel appeared beside him with a rasp of swords being drawn.

"What do you want, Castiel?" Dean asked, immediately on the defensive when his former friend had appeared. Castiel looked as unruffled as ever, but there was a dangerous glint in his eyes. Dean looked around, taking in his surroundings. "Is this you?"

The creature nodded, his lips thinning out, as he leaned forward and braced his elbows on his thighs, fingers lacing and hanging between his knees. He was watching Dean with a closed-off expression but sad eyes. "I'm trying to make you understand."

"I don't think I could ever understand," Dean replied, looking away.

Castiel joined him – together they watched couples and groups and lone humans walking around, enjoying the sights and the fun. The setting was a cross between a theme park and carnival – there were even people dressed as giant animals wandering around and giving people hugs. Dean saw a cow hugging a three-year-old while the child's mother took a picture of them. He wasn't sure why there was a cow at the park but he just passed it off as one of those things that happened in dreams.

They sat in silence for a long while, while fake time passed, and it was almost peaceful – it could have been peaceful, except for the chill of Castiel's presence. The Angel – God – radiated cold now, rolling off him in icy waves that chilled Dean to his very core. He felt like he was sitting in the middle of the ocean, slowly drowning.

"Are you killing people?" Dean asked, not even sure he wanted to know the answer.

Castiel merely nodded. "The disloyal. Yes." Then, he straightened up slightly. "I have not harmed a single living soul," he said, looking at Dean, and for a moment there were those puppy eyes on his face, the ones where he would look at Dean like he would do anything to please the Hunter, before they were washed away and his eyes became dark and navy again.

"You will, though," Dean said after a moment, his mind carefully blank. "I know you will."

Castiel chuckled – the sound was bitter. "Don't hate me for what I haven't done, Dean," he said, and there was no regret or sadness in his voice. It was a warning – advice, for Dean to keep in line.

"I do," Dean said softly, as though coming to a revelation. "I do hate you. And yet you haven't killed me or anything else. Why?" He still didn't understand.

Castiel stood up, then, still smiling, although it was a little softer. His fingers clenched a little inside the sleeves of his trench coat, almost disappearing as he shrugged, letting it settle more comfortably on his shoulders. The sound of swords clashing together rang around them, and the music and colors of the fair began to fade.

He turned, facing Dean, and held out a hand. Dean felt the same kind of lethargy and guilelessness overtake him – looking into Castiel's eyes was like being hypnotized; he couldn't resist, and he couldn't lie. He took Castiel's hand and let the creature pull him to his feet. Castiel's hand moved to press against Dean's heart.

"What good would killing you do?" he whispered. "I need you. I need you, not the souls who I must sate. The wolves want your heart, the vampires want your blood, the wendigoes want your flesh, the Gods want your soul, but they can't have it. Any of it. It's mine, all mine, and they don't get to have it. Ever." Castiel growled the last word, digging his nails into Dean's chest hard enough to draw blood, and the Hunter hissed, flinching away, but couldn't actually move because Castiel wasn't letting him.

"You don't own me," Dean growled instead, trying to put heat and strength into his voice when he knew for a fact that he had none of either.

Castiel laughed – fully laughed. It was terrifying. "I think we both know that's not true…And that, Dean, is why I have not killed you yet." He broke gazes with Dean, finally, and waved Dean's shirt away, pressing his fingertips against the recent bruises and crescent-shaped nail marks etched into Dean's flesh. The Hunter flinched again. Then, Castiel's hand moved down and flattened over Dean's stomach. "Soon, the first cycle will begin, and I will visit you in the flesh." His eyes flashed to Dean's horrified, wide ones. "And the new world will be ours."


Bobby turned eyes towards the sky as Dean finally came downstairs. They were all sitting in Bobby's main room and, true to Dean's prediction, both Bobby and Sam had books open, no doubt pouring over anything that might kill a God.

Not just any God, though.

Sam cast Dean a worried glance as his brother sat down. Dean looked pale and sick, and he wouldn't look either Bobby or Sam in the eye. The dark circles under his eyes had seemed to grow, and he hunched in on himself at the table as though defending himself from the outside world. He kept rubbing his chest as though it hurt.

"Storm's comin'," Bobby said after another crackle of thunder and lightning, the sky outside lighting up briefly.

"Not a storm," Dean replied, raising his head, just a little so that his words weren't muffled by the ring-marred, fluid-soaked, buckshot-scarred table. "Angels. Dying. Thousands of them, I bet."

"Who's killing Angels?" Sam asked, and Dean shot him a look like the answer was obvious. Sam swallowed, his brow furrowing even further, if possible. "Why?"

"'M bettin', if I was a new God who no one really liked much anyway, I'd wanna keep -." Bobby cut himself off, because Dean had made a soft sound at his words, rubbing his hands over his face. It had sounded like a sob – like a broken, wrecked noise that the last man on Earth would make while watching the only reason he had stayed alive die right in front of him. "There ain't nothin' you could'a done, Dean," Bobby said gruffly, shaking his head. "No sense wastin' time on regrets."

Dean snorted, the sound almost hysterical, and he swallowed – despite brushing his teeth four times and rinsing his mouth out with pretty much anything he could think of, the bitter taste of Castiel's kiss still lingered on his tongue. He felt too warm, too sensitive, too everything. His stomach and throat hurt from vomiting and his head ached from getting no restful sleep, and his chest hurt from the handprint that had materialized there in his second dream.

He wondered, if he made a Freddy Krueger reference to Castiel, if the bastard would finally get it.

"There were so many things I could've done, Bobby," he said, bitter and hateful, finally raising his head to look his friend and mentor in the eye. "And I didn't. And now he's killing Angels, and who knows what else."

"Well," Bobby said, exasperation getting the better of him, "are ya gonna keep whinin' or are ya gonna do somethin' about it?" His voice was all bravado, but Dean saw how thin it was – he'd done the same damned thing and the fact that Bobby was trying to lobby his own tricks back at him just filled Dean with an irrational anger and sadness.

"What can we do?" Sam asked when the silence stretched too long. "You can't kill God."

"Never met nothin' I couldn't kill somehow."

Dean had had enough. He shoved himself back from the table and stood up. "Listen," he said, going over to Bobby's kitchen cabinets and grabbing a bottle of painkillers – his head seriously hurt like nothing else – and downed two, dry, before he turned around to look at the other two. "Cas has become like Superman, Hulk and Super Shredder all at once. He's God, guys, with a complex worse than Hitler, but he didn't kill us. That has to mean something."

He paused, taking a deep breath. He hadn't had much time to think about what Castiel had been saying to him, but the words echoed around and around in his head, over and over, deafening like a swarm of locusts. "He won't hurt us."

"How can you know that, Dean?" Sam asked, frowning.

"I just do," the older Winchester snapped, but he wouldn't look at his brother. He was afraid – afraid that Sam would just know, if their eyes met. The brothers had once had a bond stronger and closer than anything else and Dean was sure that, at the worst possible time, that sort of connection would resurface and all his secrets would be cast into the light. "He doesn't care about-, about us." He paused. "That means we'll have the edge, I guess. He'll be busy starting his 'new order'. It'll be even worse than when he was in the civil war."

"You think he'll just turn a blind eye to us, even after we've made it perfectly clear we're not gonna bend over for him?" Dean swallowed at Bobby's wording, but said nothing. "He played Peepin' Tom even when we didn't suspect him. He could be here right now."

Dean swallowed again, and once again, said nothing. He didn't say that, if Castiel were here, he'd fucking know. He would just know. Just like he knew that those thunder strikes weren't thunder strikes. They were dying Angels, and he wondered how many would die, how many he would 'replace'. He didn't understand quite what Castiel's plan was but it didn't sound good. At all.

Castiel used to be predictable. He used to be stable, constant, Dean's rock, Dean's shield and unwavering presence.

"He won't be here. We're nothing to him now," he whispered, wishing that it were true. He wondered when this 'cycle' would begin, what that meant, and what would happen when it started happening. Would Dean just start replicating like microbes or something? Would Castiel…do something to him, like sex pollen or some other shit like that?

"If it's all the same to you, I'm gonna keep lookin' up ways to gank the feathery bastard."

He's not got feathers anymore, Dean couldn't help but think, semi-hysterically. They're metal. Like swords.