A/N: *Major Spoilers for 7.17 - 'The Borne-Again Identity'!* If ya haven't seen it yet, ya may NOT want to read this till after ya do! Chapter DOES include partial and EXACT quotes from the episode. As well as recaps of the finer details of the episode that are PERTINENT to this fan fiction's base storyline.
Disclaimer: NO, I do NOT 'Supernatural' in any way, shape or form… But it's NOT my fault I'm as good at playing with Kripke's toys as well as he is! *snickers* my bad.
A Few Months Later:
Dean was going out of his ever-loving MIND! Things started small, well, small-ER! He'd started noticing shades of Robo-Sam again, not the cold-hearted killer part, at least, but the no sleeping part. Apparently, Sammy's ol' pal, Lucifer, was throwing a non-stop rave in his brother's melon. AND Luci was wiping his ass with the restraining order called Sammy's hand scar trick! So, the younger Winchester had taken to popping No Doze like candy and chasing them with TRIPLE "Red Eyes"! The boy's new caffeine addiction was making Dean's alcohol habit look as tame as a wedding toast!
Then the kid up and poofs out on him, landing in a psych ward. When big brother catches up and tries to talk some fight back into him, "Quit being Dalai frickin' Yoda about this, okay? Get pissed!", all he gets for a response is a sigh and "This is what happens when you throw a soul into Lucifer's dog bowl.".
Disgusted by Sammy's new disheartened "roll over and die" attitude, Dean's "protective big brother mode" kicks into hyper drive! Going through Dad's journal, he crosses off name after name after, just about, EVERY freaking name with hopes of finding SOMEONE who can help his baby brother! Or, at very least, someone with info to someone who can! After number eight on his list politely tells him where to shove it, "…SO sorry to have BOTHERED you!", the older Winchester grabs up Bobby's journal to start going through.
He thought twice about how it had fallen from the table when he went for a new beer. Which conveniently left the business card of another Hunter lying on the floor. "Bobby, that you?" A Hunter who, in turn, was able to point him to a healer in Colorado. A healer that, apparently, is the real deal! For once! "I'm going blind." Mackey had said to the guy's wife, one Daphne Allen, to get him to show. Hey, it was true, his right eye was burnt out! Set up all kinds of traps and tests for the dude…who passed them ALL! Then, this guy, this 'Emmanuel', "He touched me, and my eye was fixed. Look – I don't believe in much…but I wouldn't call you on a maybe!"
No sooner did he hang up with Mackey, then he was grabbing his favorite carpenter jacket and reaching for the Impala's keys. In the one outer pocket that normally housed them, the Hunter pulls out a half destroyed piece of paper. Staring quizzically at it for a minute, he carefully opens it in hopes of discovering any importance it might hold. What he finds is a mire of scribbled crayon lettering. Some running together, most smeared into an unrecognizable mess. The only legible parts reading "Free…to…home…". Whatever it's original meaning had been seemed to have been lost while being sent through a washing machine with the jacket at some point! Balling it up, Dean dropped the paper nonchalantly into the can next to the door as he flew out. The memory of it's finding already forget with revving of his car's motor and the hope of having found help for his brother.
But what Dean DIDN'T give a second thought to was tracking this miracle worker down! Not hard given his usual gig! And he believed he'd prepared himself for whatever he might find at the address that stood before him! But when the Hunter dispatched a demon pretending to be the faith healer, he WASN'T ready for the person who's feet the body had dropped at!
There, at the bottom of the front porch steps, stood none other than Castiel himself! Or, at least, in form and presence! Dean stood slack jawed and dumbfounded as the former angel innocently inquired, "What WAS that?". The older Winchester brother wrestled internally with the conflicting desires to either charge down the stairs to beat the Holy CRAP out of his former friend or to crush many a rib in a massive bear hug! But he gave into neither, instead following the "man?" numbly into the house as he went to aid a bound and gagged Daphne.
After some minor pleasantries and a base explanation of the help Dean needed, he and 'Emmanuel' took off for the hospital that held a hapless Sammy. They rode together for several hours before the Hunter drew up the nerve to start a conversation. He quickly discovered what he'd already suspected…'Emmanuel'/Castiel had no memory of who he was or anything he'd done. His former friend confessing that his "wife" had found him while hiking by a river a few months ago "…drenched and confused, and... unclothed. I had no memory." Presumably, GOD had wanted her to find him! Dean found it kind of hard to believe that the Almighty, if the guy was even still AROUND, would be inclined to intercede on behalf of the angel that had tried to dethrone him!
They talked for awhile longer before the topic of Castiel was broached …to, well, Castiel.
"…Dude broke my brother's head."
"…This dude! He was your friend?"
Clenching his teeth and boring a hole in the wind shield, Dean ground out, "Yeah, well, he's gone! …I don't know if he is dead. I just know that… I used to be able to just shake this stuff off…But…What Cass did... I just can't – I don't know why."
With a heavy sigh, his passenger remarked, "Well, it doesn't matter why… You're not a machine, Dean. You're human!" Then as an after thought, or perhaps to lighten the mood, "Your friend's name was Cass?", he'd smirked, "That's an odd name."
The next morning, while stopping at a convenience store for some snacks, Dean gets ambushed by a couple black-eyed bastards…Which get put down by none other than the long elusive Meg. After some tense negotiations, the Hunter agrees to let the demon tag along and quells the amnesiac angel's chagrin by, half-heartedly, ensuring him of her "friend" status.
Later that night, after a VERY awkward trip with a demon in the backseat, the three-some arrived at the hospital only to find the entrance guarded by a small horde of Hell-spawn. Dean pulls Meg aside when she seems froggy to blow Cass' cover, who, none the less, overhears the Hunter's reprimands and wonders, "I gather we know each other." To which a short back and forth ensued, mostly between Meg and 'Emmanuel' and ending with the demon's snide reintroduction of her companions to each other with "You used to fight together. Bestest friends, actually."
Talk about a "deer caught in headlights" expression, poor little tree topper, he DIDN'T want to ask but couldn't stop himself either, "We…we're... friends? Am…I Cass?… I don't remember you. I'm sorry."
"Look." The she-demon tries to coax, impatiently, "...You can smite every demon in that lot."
"But I don't remember how." Comes 'Emmanuel's' diminutive retort.
Feeling both empathy for the angel…as well as the dire circumstances of his brother in the building, Dean offers a few words of encouragement to which the former Castiel huffs a sighed, "Alright, I'll try."
Dean and Meg look on anxiously as 'Emmanuel' steps up to the first unfortunate demon who they can clearly hear exclaim, "I know you! You're dead!" and the brave return of, "Yes, I've heard!"
Both Hunter and demon shield their eyes from the blast of light that emits from the smiting that follows the brief exchange. The rest of the villains drop quickly, one - sometimes two - at a time under the angel's hands. With each blast of dying demon, Dean can see a change flowing over 'Emmanuel'. Can only imagine what memories are raising to the surface. As the last falls after an EPIC fail at escaping, his two companions tentatively step up behind him as Dean tries, "Cass?"
"I remember you." And when Castiel turns to them, the expression on his face proclaims the angel's definite return. "I remember EVERYTHING!" With that, he marches away from the confused Hunter who follows right behind after ordering Meg to stay back.
"Cass. CASS! …You did the best you could at the time…"
"…Don't defend me!" The angel spins on Dean, pinning him with a glare consumed with both anger and guilt. "…We didn't part friends, Dean…I can't POSSIBLY fix it…So, why did I even walk OUT of that river?"
In the back of Dean's mind, some bit of nostalgia struggles for life. And he KNOWS what his former friend needs.
"Maybe TO fix it!" He pulls out his keys and pops the trunk of his car. Within a second, he's found his prize and hands it reverently to the celestial being before him.
Castiel gingerly accepts the battered and stained trench coat, in awe. He can do nothing more than stare blinking at the human for a minute before resolve settles over his visage. Taking it by the collar, he lets it fall out it's folding and gives the coat a quick snap to throw off any dust. Even Meg, who'd quietly come up behind Dean, nods and smiles as if to say, "NOW, Castiel has returned!", when Cass whips the material around him and his arms slide comfortably into the sleeves. The Hunter doesn't resist his camaraderie urges as he reaches out to his old friend and tugs on the trench's lapels, straightening the fabric, and giving a smirk and reassuring pat on Cass' shoulder. With that small sign of trust, the angel straightens his spine and easily drops into his old, familiar stoic "Angel of the Lord" guise before vanishing in a warm gust from invisible wings.
As Dean about-faces toward the hospital, unable to comprehend the New Hell of any demon unfortunate enough to encounter the angel on his mission, he hears Meg hum softly to herself and glances back briefly, curious of what captured her attention.
"What? An angel on a rampage not interesting enough for ya?"
"Nah…just wondering what this is?" She was picking up a small slip of paper and made to unfold it. "Fell outta Ol' Clarence's coat when he shook it out!"
The Hunter snatched it swiftly away even as he slammed the trunk closed and snatched out the keys, pocketing both away out of the demon's view, as he growled back, "Whatever it is…it's OBVIOUSLY Cass'! And none of YOUR business!"
Throwing up her hands defensively, she backed into the shadows, "Touché…Touché! YOUR bad!"
"Ya know…" He started but drew up short when, in the blink of an eye, she was gone! "Typical!"
Now, standing alone by the car, the weight of empty air around him set Dean's already frail nerves further on edge.
"Screw it! This is taking too long!" He mutter to no one but himself. Uncertain as he already was as to what, if any, sign he'd receive that all way clear inside, he charges the building, determinately.
Not knowing WHERE to start looking for his brother and the angel, he defaulted his choice to Sam's room. Where, to the sinking of his heart, he found Castiel standing in the doorway, seemingly emotionally broke, and his brother laying relatively innate on his bed. Unable, to both of their massive dismay, to fix the wall in Sammy's head. It had crumbled through the extent of the hallucinations into irreparable dust. But, as Dean witnessed with growing anxiety, Cass realized the only acceptable solution left to them… shift Sam's psychosis unto himself.
After a heart felt apology and frightening display, the angel practically threw himself against the wall. A look of sheer terror etched on the usually unemotional face. Rushing to Sam's side as he called out for Dean for the first time in a great while, both brothers looked fearfully between each other and the now, near, comatose angel.
They quickly arranged for Castiel to take Sam's place in the hospital and, after everything had went down and Meg showed back up, conspired with her that she take a cover position at the facility to keep an eye on the angel's welfare.
Having made "a deal with the Devil", so to speak, the Winchesters beat a hasty retreat from the psych ward. Stepping up to the Impala, Sam insisted, "…We can't just leave him!"
"Well, we can't take him with us… We can't protect him. Not really."
"…Dean, this whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing feels kind of like a demon deal." The younger Winchester pointed out in reference to Meg's "new job".
Said brother pauses at the driver's door with a deep sigh of resignation. "Look, man, I get it. She's not our friend. We don't even have friends. All our friends are dead" The older Winchester tries to dismiss his brother's foreboding.
As Sammy stands by whimsically staring back at the hospital, Dean slams himself into the Impala. Waiting for his little brother to get in, he pats down his jacket for the keys and sticks his hand in the one he feels them in. Pulling out the metal ring, a crumpled shred of paper tumbles out as well. Recognizing it as the one Meg had found that fell out of Cass' trench coat, he curiously opens it finding a note that reads:
"MY deen
got go bye. got get beeg.
got a heel samie.
wuv u. b bak sooon.
kaz"
A recent memory of a 'Free…to…home' sign half destroyed in the laundry tickles the back of his mind…immediately conjuring with it a vision of a tiny, mysterious boy with big blue eyes that had cried into his shoulder for his brother's ill state.
He smirks at the scribbled, misspelled words and quietly mutters, "Sammy and I might not have any friends left…" He reverently refolds the message and places it in the inside pocket of his jacket, next to his heart, "But we still have some FAMILY! Ya did what ya promised, Cass! And like I promised you that night…I'll find a way to help YOU! Swear!"
Noticing Sam had finally gotten in and was now gawking at him quizzically, Dean gives his little bro a brief pat on the knee.
"Let's go, dude! We got work to do!"