A/N: Thank you so much to everyone continuing to review! And the guests whom I can't PM to thank personally. :) This is the chapter that inspired the cover art, done by 29-pieces-of-me. And Merry Christmas!


Chapter 3

Sam woke to the sound of suppressed giggling and low murmur of chatter. Rolling over, he spotted Cas sitting cross-legged on the other bed in front of the laptop. He couldn't see exactly what was playing on the screen, but from the 'beeps' and 'dongs,' it sounded like cartoons. Sam twisted to see the clock, and found it was almost seven.

"Morning, Sam," Cas said cheerfully.

Sam smiled. "Morning. What ya watching there?"

Cas shrugged. "I don't know, but it's funny. The bird represents God. And coyote is man, endlessly chasing the divine, yet never able to catch him."

Sam blinked. What? He leaned over and caught a glimpse of Coyote getting an anvil dropped on his head. Ookay… At least Dean had him watching cartoons and not something like Dr. Sexy.

He pushed himself up and halted in disbelief; half a dozen sketches littered the floor, all expertly rendered with such detail that they could have hung in a gallery…had they been done on a nicer canvas than yellow memo pad paper. There were a few of Dean and Sam, and then there were more abstract pieces and fractal patterns. Had Cas really done all of these?

The door handle turned at that moment, and a second later Dean was pushing his way in, arms loaded with a paper bag and tray of coffee. He nodded a greeting toward Sam as he set the food on the table.

"Hey, Cas, I got you a maple donut."

Cas scooted off the bed eagerly and went to take a seat at the table. Sam lifted his brows at his brother, who shrugged and proceeded to set the donut out on a napkin for the angel. Then he cocked his head for him and Sam to move a few paces away. The cartoons were still playing, serving as background noise to obscure their little pow-wow.

"So everything was okay last night?" Sam asked.

"Model kid, though it would've been nice if he had slept some." Dean rubbed the back of his neck. "At least the drawing kept him occupied for a while."

Sam gestured at the scattered sketches. "He's quite the little Rembrandt, isn't he?"

Dean let out a small laugh. "No kidding." He cast a cautious look back at the angel before pulling a piece of folded paper from his jacket. "He drew this too, but when I asked him what it was, he wouldn't say. He'd go on and on about every other drawing except this one."

Sam took the sheet and studied the intricate symbol. He'd never seen it before, though it shared some stylistic strokes as Enochian. "So maybe this is somehow related to what turned him into a kid."

"I sent a picture to Bobby, but it's not like he's fluent in that shit," Dean muttered under his breath.

Sam glanced at Cas, who was happily consuming the donut and licking sticky fingers between bites. "Look, we need an angel's opinion," he said in a low voice.

"Yeah, but you saw how freaked Cas was last night. We can't do that to him," Dean protested, and Sam bit back a smile at how quickly Dean had switched his stance on the matter; Sam knew that protective older brother would come out eventually.

"Which is why I'll go somewhere else to summon Balthazar. Cas considers him a friend, and I think he's our best shot at this point."

"And if Balthazar's the bastard that did this?" Dean hissed.

"Then I'll make him tell us how to fix it. We've got the holy oil, and an angel blade. But he might also be able to help," Sam pointed out. "Look, why don't you take Cas out, get him some other clothes, for starters, and shoes, since we don't know how long he'll be like this. And bring up Balthazar in a casual way, see what Cas's reaction is."

Dean looked torn. "Maybe I should be the one to summon the dickbag…"

"I can handle it, Dean. And I won't tell Balthazar about Cas unless I have to."

Dean's mouth thinned into a tight line, and his gaze drifted back to Cas. Sam watched with fond amusement as the hard lines in his brother's expression softened at the sight of the kid angel. Dean hated to be called a 'mother hen,' even though that's exactly what he was.

"Alright. I'll take him shopping. Be careful though."

Sam nodded seriously, then jerked his attention to Cas, who was drinking from one of the coffee cups. "Cas!"

The kid jolted back, a bit of brown liquid dribbling down his chin. He blinked owlishly in confusion as Sam marched over and took the coffee away.

"You shouldn't be drinking that," Sam explained kindly.

"You and Dean do."

"Yeah, well, we're adults."

Cas canted his head to the side. "I'm an angel."

Sam heard Dean snickering behind him, so he turned and shoved the used cup in his brother's hands. "If he gets wired, you're the one who's gonna have to deal with it."

Dean's smirk slowly faded as he seemed to consider that. "I'll get you a hot chocolate while we're out, okay?"

Cas straightened, wiping his chin with the back of his sleeve. "We're going out?"

"Yup." Dean grabbed his own donut from the bag. "You need better clothes, and shoes."

Cas looked down at his bare feet and wiggled his toes. "Why?"

"Because…you just do. Trust me, okay?"

"I trust you, Dean." The gravity with which Cas said it sounded so much like his old self, that the mood in the room dropped considerably.

Dean cleared his throat. "Right then. Finish your donut and we'll go."

All three of them ate their breakfast silently after that. Then Sam walked them out to the Impala so he could get the holy oil and ingredients for the angel summoning spell from the trunk, and watched with poorly concealed amusement as Dean argued with Cas about putting on a seatbelt.

"You never use it," the little angel replied.

In the end, Dean had to buckle up as well in order to get Cas to comply.

"Good luck," Sam called, half-joking, half-serious.

"You too," Dean returned before driving off.

Sam went back inside the motel room to get his jacket, and almost stepped on one of Cas's drawings. They were so artistic that it seemed inappropriate to leave them on the floor where they could accidentally be damaged. Getting down on his hands and knees, Sam started gathering them up. He paused at one sheet of him and Dean, standing shoulder to shoulder, angled slightly away as though presenting a unified front against the world. Their expressions were set and hard, but with strength and resolve, and dare he say…courage. Sam's breath was taken away at how much emotion and nuance Cas had been able to convey in those simple strokes and shading.

He was about to put it in the stack, when a faint line inside the shadows at the top of the page caught his eye. At first he'd thought Cas had shaded in the top, maybe as clouds, or darkness representing whatever monsters the Winchesters always fought, or maybe just to emphasize the highlights in the brothers' profiles. But underneath the heavily shaded lead were lighter strokes, barely visible. And they looked like wings. Wings that were spread above Sam and Dean, tips curling down in a protective canopy.

Sam stared at the image for several long moments. Castiel, their guardian angel. The one who'd raised them both from Hell, who'd fallen for them and risen again. When they'd first met the angel, and then during the Apocalypse, it'd taken time for Sam and Cas to come to a sort of neutral acceptance of each other. Cas had always had more of a connection with Dean, anyway. Now though, the knowledge that Cas viewed Sam with the same level of devotion…it was touching. And made Sam realize that even though things had been strained between the three of them lately with Cas not being around as much, the angel still cared, even if adult-Cas didn't always know how to show it. It said a lot, really, that kid-Cas's own expression of devotion was concealed in shadows within the drawing.

But Sam would have to give all that more thought later. Right now their best friend needed help. So Sam finished picking up the sketches, and reverently placed them between the pages of another notebook, which he then tucked into the sleeve of his laptop bag where they wouldn't get bent or creased or splattered with coffee. With that, he readied himself for the somewhat unpleasant task of summoning an angel who was a dick at best, and volatile at worst.

There was an abandoned auto dealer a block down from the motel, so that's where Sam headed with his stuffed backpack to perform the summoning ritual. The lot in back was shielded from view of the street, and offered as much privacy as Sam was going to find without breaking into the show room, which had too many large windows anyway.

He set the backpack on the ground and began unpacking its contents—white chalk, herbs, candles. He drew the necessary sigil, followed by Enochian in four quadrants outside the central circle. On top of those, Sam placed the candles and lit them. Then he set out a bowl and dumped the requisite herbs and petals in it. Lastly, he poured a ring of holy oil around the perimeter as insurance; all he would have to do to light it would be to knock over one of the candles. Which meant that the only thing left to do now was summon the angel.

Taking a deep breath, Sam struck a match and dropped it into the bowl, igniting the contents. The subsequent puff of wind and swish of wings was instantaneous, and there was the tall Brit standing in the middle of the lot, directly across from Sam.

Balthazar's brows rose as he took in the Winchester. "You'd better have a good excuse for pulling that summoning crap with me."

Sam lifted his chin. "Sorry, but I needed an angel's help, and Cas has repeatedly said he's too busy to be bothered." The lie probably could have been delivered with more bite, but Sam was beginning to suspect that the war Cas was so desperately fighting was yet another unseen gesture to protect the Winchesters, something they took for granted.

"Well I'm busy too," Balthazar snapped, and shifted his weight as though to fly off.

"Wait! Please," Sam begged. He could have lit the holy oil, but he'd rather use it as a last resort. "I think this is important," he insisted, and pulled out the paper with the sigil Cas had drawn and held it up. "Do you know what this is?"

Balthazar made an impatient noise as he glanced at the page. Then his eyes flashed, and suddenly he surged forward, grabbing a fistful of Sam's shirt. "Where did you get that?" His abrupt movement ended up knocking over the bowl of herbs, and the simmering flames spilled over the line of holy oil, whooshing up into a wall of fire. Balthazar jerked his head around, and Sam took the brief distraction to wrench free and jump outside the now low-simmering ring, which didn't have any power over him. But crap, this was not how things were supposed to go.

Balthazar's nostrils flared as he whirled back toward Sam. "I will squash you, you insignificant little ant!"

Sam threw his palms up placatingly. "Okay, this looks bad, but I didn't intend to actually light that. It was just for protection."

Balthazar took a menacing step forward. "Then. Put. It. Out," he seethed.

Sam gulped. "First, I need some answers." He held up the drawing again. "What is this? And why did you react like that when I showed it to you?"

The angel glowered at him fiercely for a very long moment. "It's an angel trap," he finally spat. "And that—" he gestured sharply at the piece of paper, "—has Castiel's name in it."

Sam's eyes widened, and he glanced at the page again. "What?" He wanted to ask which part was Cas's name, but that wasn't really the most important issue at the moment. "What does Cas's name in it mean?"

Balthazar eyed him suspiciously. "It means that if he were caught in it, his grace would be completely bound and weakened. He'd be unable to fight back against any attackers who used it." The angel took another step closer, coming up to the edge of the flames, and the back of Sam's neck prickled with static. "And since Castiel has been missing since yesterday, I have to wonder what exactly you're doing with that."

Sam huffed. "If I'd known what it was, I wouldn't have called you to ask." He hesitated. "What makes you say Cas is missing? If it's only been a day since you've seen him—"

"Since anyone has seen him," Balthazar interrupted. "And the only reason Castiel would miss a crucial briefing was if you and your moronic brother called him for help." Balthazar spread his arms. "So if he's not with you, he's missing. Now why don't you tell me where you got that sigil? I doubt Castiel would've told you how to completely bind him. He may trust you, but he's not a masochist. Well, not unless there's some noble cause involved."

Sam swallowed hard; guess he was gonna have to go all-in after all. At least he had the upper-hand. "Cas did draw this; he's with us."

Balthazar's expression shifted from minor disbelief to hardened detachment. "I see. So this is an interrogation? A test? Castiel couldn't question my loyalty to my face so he had to send his pet ape to do it?"

"Cas was attacked by an angel who used this sigil on him," Sam explained. "He's…really messed up, and wouldn't let us call any angel for help. Now, despite your questionable morals buying up a kid's soul, I think you actually care for Cas. So do I. So I think you can understand why I have to be sure of your loyalty before I tell you more."

Balthazar didn't say anything for a long moment, and then crossed his arms. "Castiel believes someone on our side betrayed him," he said flatly.

"It seems that way, but we honestly don't know; Cas hasn't been able to tell us much."

Balthazar's posture stiffened, and the air pressure seemed to increase. "That bloody bastard," he muttered to himself before snapping his gaze back to Sam. "How badly is he hurt?"

The angel was definitely still pissed, but Sam recognized that tone—it was the same one he'd explained to Cas the night before that meant worry was underlying all that anger; Balthazar did care about Cas.

Sam grimaced. "Not hurt exactly. He's been turned into a kid."

Balthazar's brows rose a fraction. "He was forced to take another vessel?"

"No, his vessel—Jimmy Novak—got transformed into a four-year-old, and whatever spell did it to him must have screwed with Cas's grace, because his mind is now like a child's too. He's too scared to talk about what happened, but he drew this symbol, and I thought maybe it was some kind of spell to de-age an angel. But if it's only how to trap him…"

Balthazar was still staring at him with supreme skepticism. Sam took a deep breath, and hoped he was doing the right thing. Scuffing dirt onto the holy fire, he broke the line so Balthazar could step out. Then Sam backed up and very slowly reached into his pocket to pull out his phone.

"I'm gonna call Dean and see if he's had a chance to talk to Cas about seeing you, specifically. I don't want us to just show up and risk freaking him out."

A muscle in Balthazar's cheek twitched. "Fine."

Sam nodded and hit speed dial. Balthazar hadn't sounded as though he fully believed Sam, so maybe the angel would have no clue how Cas became a fledgling. But it was the only recourse they had at the moment. Sam just hoped that Cas would trust Balthazar—and that mother bear Dean would let the otherwise smarmy angel near him.