On with more scenes, even more painful than the last ones…I wish I had more fluff for you after this week's episode, but you'll just have to wait until the end of the story, sorry :P

Disclaimer: this chapter includes dialogue from 8x23, 8x22, 7x1 8x21 8x7 and paraphrasing of scenes throughout the rest of Season 8

Chapter Four

"So, still in the strain of 'times we didn't help Cas and nearly broke the world', let's check some of these out," Gabriel told them as they appeared in the parking lot of an abandoned church—the one Sam had attempted to turn Crowley human in, thus completing the Trials to close hell. Sam looked uncomfortable at the memory. This had been the beginning of one of the worst times in his relationship with Dean, but he reminded himself this was about Cas.

They watched as Dean opened the trunk of the Impala, rummaging around when Cas appeared.

"Dean, I need your help," he said.

Dean jumped at his sudden appearance, shaking his head. "I'm a little busy, Cas, take a number."

"I'm afraid this can't wait, Naomi has taken Metatron."

Dean looked up frowning. "And you know Metatron how?"

"I've been working with him on the angel trials."

"The what?"

"We can shut it all down. Heaven, Hell all of it."

Dean interrupted, turning to Gabriel. "I did help him, I left Sam doing those crazy-ass trials and went to sit in a bar for hours waiting for a stupid cupid to show!"

"Oh, this is just a little backstory. Sure you helped, but if you had gotten in on this in the first place, given him reason to trust you by trusting him in return, then you probably would have been able to figure out Metatron was playing all of you and stop him throwing the angels off the high rise. Because ya know what? You two have the worst track record of apologizing. I mean, it's not gonna burn your tongues off." Gabriel shook his head. "Only second to that, is how gracious you are when you're accepting Cas' apologies. Here's another glowing example."

They were in the bunker now watching as Sam sat at the table in the library, staring morosely at the 'breakfast' Dean had brought him. "A half drunk beer, jerky, and three peanut butter cups?"

"We're running low," Dean told him. "I'll make a run."

Cas watched him from the side as he grabbed his jacket. "I'll go with you, Dean," he said but the elder Winchester ignored him. "Dean? I'm sorry."

"For what?" Dean asked, turning around.

Cas floundered for words. "For everything."

"Everything," Dean said dryly. "Like, uh, like ignoring us?"

"Yes," Cas said.

"And like bolting off with the angel tablet and then losing it?" Cas cast his eyes down. "Because you didn't trust me? You didn't trust me?"

Cas hesitated, then said, "Yes."

"Yeah, no, that's not gonna cut it. Not this time," Dean said. "So you can take your little apology and cram it up your ass."

"Dean," Cas tried again. "I thought I was doing the right thing."

"Yeah," Dean replied ruefully. "You always do."

"And that's not the only time," Gabriel told them, stopping the scene and switching to another. "How about after Cas decided he wanted to be God and slurped up the Purgatory power shake? He was about to die and you couldn't even spare one small 'I forgive you'."

Sam and Dean turned to watch the new scene playing out, their jaws set tightly as they guessed what they were going to see. Sam didn't remember much at all about it, having had Lucifer riding shotgun at the time, but Dean did, and he knew he wasn't going to like it.

They were in Crowley's laboratory. Cas sat against a set of drawers, covered in blood, and fading fast, unable to even stand anymore while the Leviathans writhed inside of him, threatening to burst out. He looked horrible, like he was going to keel over any minute. Dean was looking around for what they needed, clearing a spot to trace the sigil on the wall.

"Dean?" Cas croaked.

"What, you need something else?" Dean asked shortly.

"No," Cas replied, breathing heavily. "I feel regret. About you and what I did to Sam."

"Yeah, well you should," Dean said, going back to work.

"If there was time, if I was strong enough, I would fix him now. I just wanted to make amends before I die."

Dean sighed tiredly. "Okay."

"Is it working?" Cas asked, like he was still holding onto some small hope that he might find forgiveness from his friend. Because he should have, right?

"Does it make you feel better?" Dean asked.

"No," Cas replied sadly. "You?"

"Not a bit," Dean said firmly.

Gabriel shook his head. "You couldn't even forgive him when he was dying," he said. "You knew that wasn't really Cas going postal all over the place. I mean, part of it was sure, but most of it was the influence of the power and the Leviathans, especially at the end. But there was a part of him that still believed he was doing the right thing, and just got corrupted. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It all went to his head."

"He would have broke the world if we let him continue," Dean said.

Gabriel cocked his head to one side. "Actually, he was doing a pretty damn good job of cleaning it up. He would have killed you two though, most likely. And I'm sure that was what you were most worried about." He glared as Dean opened his mouth to say something. "Not yet, we're not done yet. Let's move on to the next one. You wanna know what happened after you got barfed from Purgatory?"

"I know what happened, Cas told me that," Dean said. "I know he let go. I thought I had lost him, but he stayed on purpose, to do his penance crap."

Gabriel's eyes flashed in anger. "That don't make it right, Deano. You didn't have to let go. Leave no man behind right? I mean, come on, you brought your new BFF Benny out with you, and not Cas? I kinda think you deserve Sam leaving you rotting there for months. You didn't have to leave Castiel like that. Like this." He waved a hand and they were somewhere in Purgatory, Dean recognized it as the place where the portal was. He saw the weird rip between worlds, and himself standing in front of it, fighting against the vortex that was threatening to suck him in, reaching out to Cas who was slipping down the hill.

"Cas! Come on!" Dean shouted, scrambling for a grip on the angel's wrist. "I've got you, hold on!"

Dean swallowed hard as he watched the next bit as Cas seemed to give up, even though he knew the truth of that now, sliding back and releasing the hunter's hand. "Dean, go!"

"Cas!" Dean shouted before he was gone, swallowed by the portal.

Cas turned, looking around frantically as the Leviathans started to appear, dropping out of the sky in black blobs and forming into human shapes. They surrounded him and he fought back as well as he could, but they overwhelmed him, beating him mercilessly and forcing him to the ground to where he could barely move, as they prepared to tear him apart and probably eat him.

"Cas," Sam breathed, watching the scene, his hands fisting at his sides, his stance tense, mirroring Dean's as they fought their instincts to run into the fray to fight, saving their friend. The old surge of adrenaline Dean had lived with during his time in Purgatory came back to him, hard to shake.

All of a sudden, a bright light appeared and three angels materialized in a rush of flapping wings, they tore into the Leviathans, beating them back and unearthing Cas from their midst, grabbing him by the arms and disappearing to the dismay of the monsters still out for the angel's blood.

"He thought he was rescued," Gabriel said. "The next part, he doesn't remember consciously, Naomi made sure to wipe that, but Lucifer seemed to have traveled deeper into his subconscious than even Cas went."

He snapped his fingers again and they were standing in the corner of a spotless, modern office room with a desk and several chairs for an audience with whoever worked there. Dean looked at the chair behind the desk and bit back a snarl of contempt, seeing Naomi sitting there.

The doors to the office opened and she looked up from what she had been doing, standing as the angels who had rescued Cas from Purgatory pulled him into the room. Cas was so weary he sagged, unable to keep his own feet. He looked around, bewildered before he was deposited into a chair.

"Th-Thank you, brothers," Castiel said gratefully, breathing heavily, looking down at his hands as if unsure how he was still alive.

"Castiel, it's good to have you back with us."

Cas looked up at Naomi as she gave him a falsely kind smile. "I—do I know you?"

"Probably not, I'm Naomi," she said.

He looked around again. "Why—why did you save me? I thought I was meant to stay there, to do my penance…"

"Oh, no, Castiel," Naomi said quickly. "No, you are needed here, we have a very important job for you."

"You do?" he asked. "But I thought…"

"It doesn't matter." She shook her head and smiled. "There are few who could do what we need. We needed you, Castiel."

"What for?"

"You'll find out soon enough." She touched his forehead and he disappeared.

Gabriel paused the memory. "This is when you found him looking like roadkill wandering out in the middle of nowhere. We'll fast forward through that to when he was forced to report back to Naomi."

Sam and Dean felt a sudden sense of vertigo as Gabriel literally fast-forwarded the scene to a place where Castiel was escorted into the office again, this time clean and no longer so weary, but just as confused.

"Where am I?" he asked, looking around hesitantly. "I don't understand…"

"You're in heaven, Castiel," Naomi told him, stepping forward.

"Heaven?" he inquired. "But why?'"

"You have a job to do. But first, we need to get a little unpleasant business out of the way."

Castiel began to look nervous as the angels who had escorted him came forward to take his arms at a nod from Naomi.

"Who are you, what do you want?" he demanded, beginning to dig in his heels as he was led to a side room where a chair sat, accompanied by a table with a sheet covering it. Castiel swallowed hard, not liking the looks of this; something in the back of his mind was sending off warnings.

"It's no concern of yours at the moment. I'm just here to make sure you're ready for the duty we need you to do," Naomi said. "Don't fight, Castiel. It will all be over before you know it."

"No, I…I remember…" Castiel struggled harder against the other angels as they forced him toward the chair. "Please, I don't think I like this. Please don't."

Naomi ignored him, taking the cover off the table and checking over several gleaming instruments that Cas could only think were for torture. With one last effort the angels heaved him into the chair and strapped him down. Cas still struggled, and Naomi reached out and grabbed his chin to hold him still, tsking lightly.

"You always were a hard one to deal with, Castiel. We'll soon change that." She flicked on a drill from the table, and brought it down toward Castiel's wide, horrified eye.

"Okay, enough," Sam pleaded, turning away, swallowing sickly, as Dean was cursing under his breath. Gabriel watched them without much sympathy.

"Sure, you can't watch it, but you don't mind the idea that it happened?"

"We never said that," Dean protested, hands fisting at his sides. "We didn't know half of that actually happened to him. Of course we care what happened to Cas. I beat myself up for leaving him in Purgatory. I would give anything to go back and make sure this had never happened."

"You say that now, but when you finally did get Cas back, you were so suspicious of him—again, I might add, just like when he was fighting his civil war—that you still didn't listen to him, and didn't see the signs that he was suffering until it was too late and he had no choice but to run because he didn't know if he could trust you."

Dean swallowed hard but didn't try to deny it this time.

"And then," Gabriel chuckled dryly. "Boy, then, was your coup de grace. When Cas was hunted by heaven after he had nearly beat Dean to a pulp—should have continued, in my opinion, but I know that would have only messed him up more—and decided to turn fugitive and get as far away with the angel tablet as he could. By the way, Dean, I'm sure you were feeling sorry for yourself when your BFF Cas turned on you and decided to give you a makeover with his fist."

"It wasn't his fault," Dean gritted out.

"You're damn right it wasn't his fault!" Gabriel said. "Check out Naomi's preferred training method."

He snapped them to a huge warehouse that was scattered with bodies. All of them looked like Dean. The elder Winchester swallowed hard and Sam looked like he was going to be sick.

"Oh God," the younger brother choked out, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth in horror at the gory sight. "What is this?"

"Watch," Gabriel told them.

Cas stood over one of the bodies that was cowering away, hands raised in pleading, but the angel simply stabbed without any emotion, dropping the body to the ground with a dull thud. Naomi, standing off to one side nodded in approval.

Sam flinched and Dean instinctively reached out to grip his wrist, though he too was disturbed by the scene.

"But it wasn't always like that," Gabriel told them, waving a finger in a circular gesture as the scenery blurred around them. "Brave, stupid, loyal Castiel held out for a long time. He wouldn't kill even illusions of you, Deano. The kid always was a little too sentimental when it came to his favorite pets."

The blurring stopped and they watched as Cas and Naomi appeared, and standing off to one side were two more angels and one of the fake Deans.

"Do it, Castiel," Naomi was saying as the other angel continued to shake his head.

"No, I won't do it," he said firmly. "I won't kill Dean."

"It's not Dean Winchester, Castiel, surely you can see that," she growled, impatient.

"It doesn't matter, it will feel the same, and I know why you're doing this, I will not let you brainwash me into killing my friend!"

He jerked as she grabbed the back of his coat, shaking him like a dog before pulling him down so her face was next to his. "You will, or I will make you."

Cas turned to stare her straight in the eye. "I won't."

Naomi sighed and released him. "Very well then. Gentlemen, dispose of this illusion—slowly."

Cas tensed and watched in horror as the two threw the fake Dean to the ground, as one held it and the other gutted it slowly before stabbing it in the throat. All the while it cried out with Dean's voice.

Cas shuddered, head turned down, before he was grabbed between the two angels.

"If you don't obey, Castiel, next time it will be the real Dean Winchester," Naomi told him. "I see there is still much you have to learn. Take him back to my room. It's time for another session."

"No, please," Cas tried as he was dragged away.

Gabriel stopped the scene and turned back to Dean. "See that? And you know, sometimes they did worse things to your illusion self for Cas' benefit—though admittedly not nearly as creative as my little time loop at the Mystery Spot. Sometimes they used Sammy-boy too, just to change things up a bit. But I'll skip the R-rated gore this time, that's not the point I'm making. It's what happened next."

They were suddenly inside a Biggersons' watching Cas sit at a table with a cup of coffee in front of him, looking so exhausted he would have been unconscious if he had been human. But Dean could tell this wasn't at the period when Cas was human. He suddenly disappeared and the scene flicked to a different location but was still a Biggersons'. It did that several more times before Sam frowned at Gabriel. "What is this?"

"This is Cas doing everything he can to keep the other angels from finding him. Oh, here's the part where they finally do." He nodded to the scene with a tight jaw.

The flipping stopped and they found themselves among carnage, watching Cas crouching beside a woman with burnt out eyes, telling him over and over again that he had to stop. Then two angels appeared and put a blade to Cas' throat. Their friend gave in wearily and allowed them to force him into a chair.

Naomi was there, spouting out her spiel about how Cas was so disobedient.

"How many times have you torn into my head and washed it clean?" Castiel asked bitterly, glaring up at Naomi, still defiant.

"Frankly? Too damn many," she replied. "You're the famous spanner in the works. Honestly, I think you came off the line with a crack in your chassis. You have never done what you are told. Not completely. You don't even die right, do you? Where is the angel tablet, Castiel?"

Cas looked up at her slowly. "In the words of a good friend—bite me."

Dean actually raised his eyebrows, casting a look at Sam, a small bit of pride for the angel stirring, but he was worried at what would happen next. He knew Cas had come back to them torn up after this, and had no real idea as to what had gone on. And what Naomi said next didn't still his fears that it had been bad for Cas.

"Oh, we'll bite, don't worry." And she had the audacity to smile as if she enjoyed the prospect.

They watched silently as the angels interrogated Cas, knocking him around until Crowley made his entrance, chasing off Naomi before she shot Cas in the stomach. The angel was obviously in pain, though he tried to hide it as well as he could.

"This is where it gets rough," Gabriel told them, as he snapped his fingers again and they were in a different location where Crowley and the angel who had been working for him stood around Cas who was slumped in a chair, one hand pressed to his wound.

"You can do whatever you want, Crowley," Cas was saying. "I will never tell you where I buried the tablet."

"I know, Cas, I know," Crowley said, standing up, still waving his gun around. "Luckily, I don't believe you'll have to. I've been getting regular updates from my expensive friend here," a nod to the traitorous angel, "Naomi thinks that touching the tablet has broken her spell over you."

"The tablets weren't meant for the angels, and they weren't meant for you," Cas told the demon firmly.

Crowley ignored him, continuing. "She's got a lot of her plate so I won't fault her for missing it. I was thinking to myself—self, if Cas got away by touching the tablet then why would he ever stop touching the tablet? And then I thought to myself—self, he hasn't stopped touching the tablet, now, has he?"

Cas began to look frightened as Crowley stepped forward with a satisfied chuckle, knowing he had been right, and shoved his hand into the wound in Cas' stomach, yanking out the angel tablet.

"Hell, Cas," Dean said under his breath as Sam cursed. "Why didn't he let us help him? He didn't have to go to these lengths."

Gabriel effected a 'well duh' look. "I know, right? Where was that kind of thinking when he had to freaking cut himself open and shove the angel tablet in for safe keeping?" he shouted. "My baby bro is totally badass, but still."

"In our defense, this was still something he failed to tell us," Sam offered. "All we knew is that he had been captured by Crowley and had the angel tablet stolen from him."

"Yeah, well, again, your communication skills suck," Gabriel said with a shrug. "So, this hitting home, yet? Yes, no? Okay, I think it's time for phase three."

If you're into S8 AUs, you can check out more of my idea of both sort of 'deleted scenes' from the season and how I think it should have gone in my story "Never Give Up, Never Give In" if you wish :)