Jody Mills runs into Castiel on the way back to Bobby's room, and with a look he is aware that she knows. Perhaps she's known all along. He thought that she was guarding Bobby, Bobby's room, but her presence here. . . it was him, all along, that she was watching.

Squaring his shoulders, Castiel stalks past her, lets her fall in behind him, and leads the way to Bobby's room again without a word. She announces them to Bobby, who waits a beat and then asks into the quiet, turning his head towards the sound of movement. "What's got a bug up your ass, Cas?"

Castiel doesn't answer, gathering the books and stacking them, just for something to do. It's Jody who speaks, leaning closer to Bobby and speaking in soft tones that Cas can pick up only snatches of.

". . . news media. . . photo. . . Novak. . . daughter." The book he had been reading hits the table rather harder than he intended, and Castiel has nothing left to do with his hands, bracing them atop the battered cover and letting out a harsh breath. There is no window to look out of here, save into the hallway and the stares of doctors that Jody had apparently warned of him, and he could pace the entire open space of the room in six cramped strides. He is caged as effectively as if he had been taken into custody for his sins and heresies.

"Jody, mind giving me and Feathers here a minute?"

The sound of Bobby's voice freezes all of Castiel's muscles. He turns his head just in time to catch Jody leaning over Bobby, her lips grazing the bandages over the old man's face, before she stands and averts her eyes from Cas, color rising in her cheeks, and jerks her thumb at the door. "I, um. . . I've got one of my deputies on the way in just a minute. Gotta get him briefed, then when Dean and Sam get back, figured I'd settle you lot in at my place for the night."

She doesn't look at Castiel again as she flees the room, and he finds that he can't blame her. He does not want to see himself, either.

Cas waits, tensed, for Bobby to begin after the door closes behind her. Each second drags on, somehow slower than the one before, until he breaks first, speaking harshly, hands clenched into fists at his sides. "Are you planning to lecture me, now? Offer your wisdom and experience and tell me that this will all turn out for the best?"

"Actually, I was figuring you could use a minute to get your shit together without an audience." Bobby's gruff, honest words puncture Castiel's rigid control—they are so far from what he expected. His hand finds the arm of the visitor's chair, and he falls into it heavily, burying his face in his palms.

Bobby's silence is comforting, this time. Castiel has been doing his best to fill the quiet for Bobby, to give him a distraction, and now the old hunter is offering him the best he can in return. He knows Bobby's awake, knows he's thinking, that sharp mind considering the situation, even dulled as it is by drugs and pain, but he has been given a respite, however brief.

He pulls together his scattered thoughts as best he's able, and organizes them rigidly. Battle strategy. They need to determine how to adapt to this change in their situation. "She is playing off of my memories of the Whore of Babylon, and what I know of the tactics War used. Sowing seeds of discord and playing faith against human fear. Either people will riot, turn against each other, or they will simply cease productivity and await the end. They cannot have their foretold Apocalypse, so they are fashioning a new one."

Bobby lets him finish, and responds rationally. "She's deliberately throwin' you under a bus, doing it herself. Any reporter worth their salt'd be able eventually to turn up who she was, from the missing persons report Amelia filed, and it ain't that hard afterwards to find out about you, Feathers. If you've been deluding yourself into thinking the big God Debacle disappeared just 'cause . . ."

"Don't." Cas begins, and Bobby talks right over him, straining his voice to do so.

"No, Castiel, you're gonna listen this time, whether or not you wanna keep up with some dumbass competition about who's got most right to be the grumpy old man in this room. You're gonna shut your piehole and hear out the person who's been dealin' with the concept of a big damn shame since before you could feel that kinda emotion, you got me?"

The outburst seems to have taken something out of Bobby. After a moment, Cas leverages himself to his feet, and pours water into the cup left on the bedside table, shaking a few ice cubes into it as well, and holds the straw to Bobby's lips as he has seen the nurses do several times now. "Drink. If you hurt yourself yelling at me, I will never live it down with Sam and Dean."

"Yeah, yeah, bite me." Bobby grumbles under his breath, but he takes the drink anyway, and whether he feels embarrassment at needing the assistance Cas would never be able to tell through the bandages and the gruff persona. "Alright, pull the chair closer Feathers, and sit your ass down, 'cause I ain't going through this twice."

Reluctantly, Castiel sets the cup of water back down and does as he's told. He has been a soldier for far too long to balk at such simple orders, regardless of how little he cares to hear them, and some part of him still recognizes this as acceptance however veiled, and Bobby is human and someone whom the boys go to for advice. He will listen, for now.

"We all got shit we wanna self-edit out of our lives. More you stick your neck out, more likely it is your crap isn't gonna stay private for long. Those boys? They're lucky any day they aren't tossed in jail. . . and they walk into damned police stations across the country every week anyway, because they gotta risk it. Me? Hell, Cas, what you and they don't know about me could fill a book. I've screwed up plenty, trust me. Jody out there still threatens to arrest me at least once a week, and she's got plenty to go on for it. We get that you were tryin' to do something right. . . but when you fuck up you don't do it in half-measures, boy."

Cas huffs quietly, ducking his head, and allows the term to go unquestioned for once. Bobby is struggling to speak, now, and Cas knows that his injuries go beyond the gruesome damage done to his skin and eyes.

"Them putting a face to what you did was a matter of time. So you're a criminal, a murderer, and an outcast. We all are. You gotta ask yourself if it's gonna stop you. Then ask if what the talking heads have to say means a damn thing to you. 'Cause the only people whose opinions you should give a damn about? We knew already, idjit, and forgave you."

Bobby falls silent, and Castiel stares at him, hands folded in his lap and mind whirring. It doesn't take long for Bobby to grow impatient again, deprived of sight to give him cues as to what was happening. "Don't tell me you fell asleep, 'cause I ain't repeating. . ."

"There are times when it is obvious why Dean and Sam love you, and what you have given to them that no one else has ever offered. I wish. . ." Castiel's voice is quiet, and he leans forward, raising a hand and then hesitating. There is nowhere on Bobby where he could clasp the other man affectionately without harming him, and it is frustrating. He knows that this is not a family that hugs, but Bobby has clapped him on the shoulder several times now, and he wishes he could return the gesture.

He should be able to fix this.

He sits there, hand awkwardly hovering over Bobby's shoulder, staring down at the bandages below him, frozen by his thoughts. Bobby rouses him from it eventually and by the frustration in his tones, it is not the first time he has attempted to get his attention. Dragging the chair forward, he clears his throat and shuffles anxiously.

"I would like to try something."

"I know I'm apparently damned loveable, but you ain't kissin' me, if that's where you're going."

Cas blinks, and looks down at Bobby in confusion. "No, Bobby, I'm not physically attracted to you in that way."

"Well that's damned reassuring." Bobby mutters, and then speaks up to clarify. "Don't tell me you're attracted to me in some other way, Feathers, 'cause you. . ."

"You carry a piece of my Grace. It's small. . . I have never considered it, given how much I have put into Dean and into Sam, but I have touched your soul as well. And I have brought you back from the dead. I think. . . I would like to try something. It might help you." Shuffling closer, he rests his hand over the bandages across Bobby's forehead, and closes his eyes.

"What, like healin' me?" Bobby is old enough, world weary enough and has been let down enough by Castiel's sporadic involvement in their lives that he doesn't try to muster up hope.

Cracking one eye open, he looks down at the blind face of his husband's mentor, his friend, and sighs. "I am not an angel. I cannot give you back your eyes. But if I can excite that piece of Grace within you. . . I think I may be able to speed the healing process. Undo some of the nerve damage and the threat of infection the doctors are discussing."

It wasn't eavesdropping if he was sitting right there. And he is quiet, not unobservant.

"This gonna hurt you?" It's a foregone conclusion that Bobby is willing to take this risk for himself, it's the kind of man he is: a gambler, willing to risk loss for the potential of greater gain. Castiel's lips quirk faintly at the corner, and he closes his eyes again and seeks out that part of himself that is woven into Bobby's being.

"It seems likely."

But while Castiel is barely acquainted with what kind of man he is himself, as a human, he knows from millions of years of experience that the threat of pain hasn't ever stopped him.

. . .

It's funny how a place known for burning heat and blazing fires can leave a man so cold. Dean took his share of the flames, knew every possible way you could apply them, too, to leave a man screaming, but when he thought of Hell he thought of ice. How it seeped into your soul after a couple of years on the other side of the blade. How it could make you capable of just about anything.

The entire basement smells like fire and ruin and blood and iron, and he never wanted to be here again.

There's a demon strung up before him staring at him with unmistakable fear, and he stopped letting himself think of how much closer this brings him to the Dean he met in the future about the time he stopped holding back on his brother's account, when Sam hauled himself back topside with the excuse of keeping an eye out to make sure nothing snuck up on them.

Which is good. He doesn't want his brother seeing him like this.

Hunkered down in a crouch, elbows across his knees, Dean waits for the demon's black eyes to fix on him again, rubbing blood off of his hands and onto a rag that should be in Baby's trunk for him to use in getting grease off of his hands, but was stained in layers of old, rust-colored blood already.

"You were saying something about Asmodeus's plans." Dean prompts quietly, and the demon thrashes, bound wrist to ankle, muscles in his neck corded and taunt and teeth bared. The hissed denials, the flash of terror at the name, Dean knows what he's looking at, and he sees opportunity there. Crowley, for all he got his hands on a ton of monsters during the Purgatory search, is an amateur when it comes to this. Even Meg, she gets overeager for the pain and misses out on the important thing. It's the fear that breaks people, the seed of doubt. . . it's about pushing the right buttons.

Rising to his feet, Dean walks over to the duffle bag he'd had Sammy drop down to him. It was one of the tricks of a true professional: don't show all your tools at once. That's an amateur's ploy, a shock and awe start when it's the slow build that makes the difference. Always leave them wondering what's still in store, what horrors could be behind door number two. He's seen the demon lick his lips and look at the bag in fear several times already, and now he digs to the bottom, and pulls out a cloth-wrapped bundle from below his clothes and weapons. "You're scared of her. I get that. She's a scary angel bitch, innit she? And you, you're just a piss-ant demon, got dropped here to pick up strays, report back if you ran into anything interesting. Here's the thing I think you're missing, though. . ."

Dean unwraps the bundle slowly, keeping fabric between his skin and the blade beneath, an archaeologist handling an artifact, and even with his stomach twisting sickeningly, he keeps the feeling out of his voice and off of his face, cold and impassive.

"Me, I know angels. Better than anyone, really. And yeah, they're scary powerful, but you know what they aren't?" Alastair's blade, dropped to the floor of a cave in Utah, used last to bring Asomodeus and Ba'el into the world again, holds a razor edge even without care. Dean's blood, Castiel's blood, it's dried onto the handle of the straight razor, but seems to have vanished right off of the blade itself, like it had been drunk into the very metal of the thing. It was always ready for more blood. Dean would know. He'd spent thirty years under this razor.

"Creative. Angels aren't creative. She'll smite the hell out of you. . ." Dean doesn't even allow himself to appreciate his own pun. ". . . But that's all you have to be afraid of."

"She's drinking us." The demon argues, almost a panicked whine with his eyes fixed on the blade, and that's just the kind of information Dean really wishes he didn't need. Asmodeus was feeding Claire demon blood, like Lucifer had Sammy, keeping the vessel fresh and strong.

God, the poor kid.

Examining the blade, Dean continues as if he hadn't been interrupted, because the scare tactic is working, clearly. "Last time angels needed someone tortured, they called me, had me stick Alastair himself up on a rack. . ." Dean waggles the blade indicatively, still holding it with the fabric between himself and the metal. "This was his, you know.

He doesn't want to touch it.

He doesn't want to be close to it.

And yet, he couldn't get rid of it, either.

"You really don't want me to have to cut answers out of you." Dean's words are just above a whisper, as he regards the blade, holding it close to his eyes and turning slowly, and this is truth. Everything he's said is truth. And that's what makes it scary.

The demon talks.

Then again, Dean always knew it would.

It dies with Ruby's blade buried in its heart and light flashing behind its skin. Alastair's blade, unused, goes back into the bag as Dean calls out for Sammy to help haul him back up. His brother looks green around the gills, and Dean avoids his gaze as he throws the bag in the back and himself into the driver's seat, tearing out of the junkyard.

"Dean, are you. . . ?"

"Later." Dean's breaking speed limits, digging into his jacket pocket and pulling out his phone, throwing it into Sam's lap. "Call Cas. Now."

It's a credit to how Sam's been raised that he starts dialing before asking the question. "Why are we calling Cas, what's. . .?"

Dean's hands twist the wheel expertly, and nearly four thousand pounds of American steel makes a hairpin turn that his beloved muscle car, for all her many strengths, was not designed for. Sam curses sharply, nearly dropping the phone, and braces himself with a knee against the dash and a hand clinging to the handle above his door.

"Shit, Dean!"

"This was a two-part trap, Sam. And we ain't the target any more."

. . .

Someone cries out, and Cas isn't sure if it was him or if it was Bobby. For a moment, the lines are blurred: sharp, stabbing pain lances through Castiel's head, originating behind his eyes, and for a split second he stupidly finds himself terrified that he has lost his eyes, as his mind and body revolt against him. His back hits the tile floor of the hospital room, the chair off-balancing into the wheeled medical table beside him, and the convulsion ends with him watching small cotton squares drift down from the table lazily, like sterile, square woven snowflakes to land around him on the tile.

He can taste blood in his mouth, and there's a telling slickness at his nose and running from the channels of his ears. His heart is racing, his muscles trembling as if he'd closed his hand around a high-voltage line, and his head. . .

Castiel hasn't prayed at all in nearly half a year, now. It's only that resolve that keeps him from it now, for the headache that has followed Castiel since the day ash wings burned out behind him in a fallow field not far from here, that only ever had abated with the involvement of narcotics and opiates in combination, has increased threefold.

Above him, hanging over the hospital bed, Bobby Singer's bandaged hand clenches partway into a fist. This is a good sign. This is sign that the gamble has paid out. Of course, Cas did not stop to consider that increased nerve response and decreased damage to them would subsequently increase the body's ability to feel pain, in the short-term.

Medical alerts are sounding, sensors and monitors attached to Bobby going mad, and the sounds crash into Cas as he rolls to get his hands beneath him, head hanging down, on hands and knees as he begins the process of making himself vertical to help. When strong hands find his arms, hauling him to his feet, he doesn't resist them at first.

It's only when he lifts his head and looks directly past the fleshmask into the eyes of the ghoul wearing the skin of Sheriff Mill's deputy, and sees the abomination whose borrowed visage shows that Bobby's regular doctor has been recently consumed, that he understands just how poorly timed his experiment was.

At their feet, Castiel's phone begins to ring, a warning just a few minutes too late.