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"Who, Cas?" Sam's eyebrows bunched together as his eyes left the ceiling and settled on the angel's face. "Who's coming?"
Castiel did not seem inclined to answer, and any further push was lost on Sam's lips when the ceiling began to quiver and the floorboards beneath their feet shook. The light fixtures began to jostle, the illumination fluctuating randomly and casting bizarre shadows around the walls. One by one the bulbs exploded into tiny showers of shattered glass, landing at their feet.
The brothers didn't need to be told when pissed-off angels signalled their arrival.
Two figures materialised before the three of them, at precisely the moment the floorboards and ceiling stilled again. Anna and Uriel surveyed the Winchesters and Castiel in turn. Sam felt his stomach jump slightly – the last time he had come face to face with Anna, she had been intent on killing him.
"Uriel." Castiel turned to his brother in greeting, then nodded to his sister. "Anna. You come with purpose, I assume." The tone in Castiel's voice did unpleasant things to Sam's gut.
"Castiel." She replied, a hint of regret in her voice. Both new sets of angelic eyes were focussed on Castiel, as though studying his every move. Sam knew he was going to dislike anything and everything that transpired from now onwards.
"I'm sorry. Really, I am…we both are." She spared a sideways glance at Uriel, who didn't acknowledge her. His eyes were still trained on his brother, with a look Sam had seen before burning there - distaste.
"We do come to you with a purpose, yes." She continued. Uriel clasped his hands tightly in front of him. "You have to understand…we have orders."
"Is this about me?" Sam heard the words leave his mouth before he realised he was speaking. "Are you here to finish me off?"
Anna surveyed him, weighing up his question.
"Sam, I was wrong to go against my orders." She began, looking solemn and apologetic. "I should not have tried to harm you. I was reckless and…and I've learned my lesson."
Neither of the Winchesters missed the subtle glance Uriel threw her way.
"However…" Sam knew this was not simply an apology visit. "…we have been sent to you with an ultimatum."
"Great." Dean piped up from Sam's right-hand side. "Why do I not like the sound of that?"
"Castiel," Uriel took over, ignoring Dean completely, "I'm sure you are aware of the punishment that often comes with rebellion." He let a meaningful silence hang in the air, and both brothers looked towards the angel.
"I get the feeling this is not about Anna attempting to kill Sam against our orders?"
Dean, despite himself, felt a smirk of pride pass his face at the angel's newly-developing sarcasm. He was a damn good teacher. Uriel, however, did not seem to appreciate this.
"You should have been smote the moment you chose to stay on earth." He hissed, his eyes betraying him with a glance towards the brothers. "You know full well that you're too attached to them. It's sickening."
Castiel's face betrayed no hint of emotion.
"And when Anna mentioned…" Uriel trailed off, his dark eyes once again brimming with repulsion, and he quashed what was apparently some sort of digression from his main point. "…ordinarily, the humans would die too."
His gaze landed on Dean. "You're lucky you're so important."
"We're being given a reprieve." Anna interjected, her voice soft and cautious, as though attempting to buffer Uriel's tone. "Both of us – we can be forgiven." A sisterly smile touched her lips.
"And?" Castiel said cautiously, mirroring the hunters' suspiciousness. Anna seemed at a loss for how to continue, so Uriel picked up harshly.
"Your pets need to accept their roles," he spoke as though Sam and Dean were not present, which made Sam twitch internally with anger, "or they die. This is not a joke, brother."
Castiel, who had remained looking impartial for the entirety of his fellow angels' speech so far, finally showed a sliver of emotion. His head dipped minutely and his eyes twitched, his muscles going taut.
"You will not touch them." His voice had also dropped, threatening and dripping with carefully controlled rage.
"It is not up to you." Uriel said, turning to Sam and Dean. "It is up to your friends here. What will it be?"
"They have already chosen." Castiel answered for them. "And…" He paused, and Sam noticed him raising his head to look at them. His eyes passed over Sam and landed on his brother, who held the angel's gaze with a tight knot in his brow and an unfamiliar look in his eye. "-and I stand by their decision."
Sam had never seen Uriel look so repulsed and disappointed. He sighed.
"That is…regrettable. But they, like all of their kind, can be replaced."
Castiel moved forwards with such suddenness that Sam almost jumped. He planted himself firmly between his fellow angels and the humans in his charge, staring Uriel down with a rush of defiance.
Sam watched from around the angel's shoulder as Uriel's nose wrinkled and his brow creased. He physically flinched.
"Anna did not lie." He hissed, not attempting to quash the disgust on his face. "You…you smell like one of them."
Castiel did not flinch in the slightest.
"It's quite repugnant. I've never found them to be much of a distraction myself…I've never seen the…appeal." Sam noticed that Uriel's eyes had been on Dean for most of this scolding, and that now he was receiving an intense judgemental once-over. He attempted to process this.
"Castiel, let us help you." Anna, the sweeter side of their good-cop-bad-cop routine, interjected again. "You're in too deep."
"You know enough of feeling, Anna, to understand this."
"I don't want to hurt you, Castiel. But if they refuse to accept their roles…our orders are to kill them. And you know the consequences of that, now…" Her eyes held on to the solemn, saddened glaze they had displayed since her appearance in the room.
Sam glanced at Dean, hoping for an answer as to what the hell the 'consequences' of their deaths would be for Cas. He expected to see his own confusion reflected in Dean, but instead he found that his brother wasn't even looking at him.
Dean stared down at the floor, and Sam followed his gaze to see that no, he wasn't looking intensely at the creaking floorboards of the bar. He was staring down at the sleeve of Castiel's trench coat, where his right hand hung down by his side. He was softly, subtly, stroking Castiel's hand with the back of his knuckles as it rested by the angel's side.
Sam's brain prepared to evacuate his body.
What the fuck is going on?
It was only when Dean stiffened beside him and withdrew his own hand, and Uriel turned his attention to Sam, that he realised he had spoken his thought aloud.
"Excuse me?" Uriel's eyebrows twitched upwards.
"I…I mean, what the hell are you all talking about? I feel like I'm being left out of some sort of…loop. All of this, it's…what's going on!"
After Sam had apparently finished tripping over his own words, Uriel collected himself and began to voice his own incredulity.
"You…you are unaware?" A faint smile ghosted over his face, and Sam felt his confusion melt together with nausea. "Anna failed to tell you?"
Sam glanced at Anna, who was in turn watching Uriel with unsure eyes.
"Or rather more surprising – your own brother neglected to inform you of his…situation?" Again, the mild disgust had crept into the angel's tone, but it was now masked by amusement.
"That's none of your goddamn business." Dean spat, taking a step forwards until he pressed into Castiel, seemingly only now remembering that the angel was standing in front of him. He relaxed minutely and inched backwards again. Uriel's smirk twitched.
"This is…fascinating, really." His eyes passed between the three of them. "Castiel, can you really be so involved to be sucked into their insignificant dramas?" Castiel brushed off his brother's judgemental tone.
"I'm sorry," Sam interrupted again, "I've still had nothing explained, here. What 'situation' is Dean in?"
A silence hung in the air, nobody offering Sam any information, until Castiel finally spoke.
"Dean and I…"
"Cas." Dean's tone was warning, like he was scolding a child. The angel fell silent, unsure eyes being drawn immediately to the eldest hunter and settling on his face, searching it for guidance and asking for permission. His eyes pleaded with Dean's in a silent conversation.
"This is ridiculous." Uriel stated. "Castiel, you would obey a human as though he were our Father?" He made a scoffing noise at the back of his throat. Castiel kept his eyes on Dean, ignoring his own brother's judgemental incredulity.
"When an angel is mated," Anna spoke up, "he or she develops a bond much deeper than that of an emotional or physical human connection. Their mate…tethers to them, in many ways you will not know of. Once mated they are…fiercely protective. Angels will make the ultimate sacrifice for their mate, even without conscious choice." She paused, evaluating Sam's reaction. "If we were to kill your brother, Sam, Castiel would also die."
When Anna fell silent, every other person in the room had their attention focussed on her. Uriel barely blinked. Castiel dipped his head before a side-ways glance at Dean, and Dean stared at her with barely-contained shock on his face.
"You're saying…" Sam started, his brain working in overtime to process what was possibly the strangest thing he had ever been told. He turned his attention away from Anna and faced Dean.
"-that you and Castiel are…mated?"
Dean, unable to avoid Sam's burning gaze, turned towards his brother. His face was much less flushed and he appeared less flustered than Sam would have expected had this news been true. However, Dean nodded his head gently. He glanced at Cas, who had been watching him since Anna stopped speaking, and Sam felt something in his stomach when he evaluated the look he saw in his brother's eyes.
It reminded him of the way Bobby had said their father used to look at their mother.
It was the way Bobby himself looked when he zoned out staring at his wife's faded photograph.
It was the way people told him he once looked at Jessica.
The knot tightened in Sam's stomach, unsure of how to process this information. A new thought suddenly occurred to him. "Dean…" He began, pulling his brother's attention back to him, "why didn't you tell me?"
Now that he had this knowledge, the explanation for every strange turn of events and all of Dean's withdrawn behaviour over the past couple of weeks, it felt like a weight had been physically lifted from him.
"I…" Dean frowned slightly, trailing off for lack of a decent answer.
Sam allowed this, seeing the discomfort still evident on his brother's face. "I'm just glad you're ok."
A moment of silence hung in the room as Dean processed his brother's warm tone. He had been found out; his and Castiel's bond had been exposed – and it seemed he was accepted. They were accepted.
"As touching as this scene is," Uriel interjected, his clasped hands finally detaching from each other, "we regret to remind you of your ultimatum."
The Winchesters and Castiel turned to him again, postures stiffened and wary.
"We have made our choice." Castiel reiterated.
"Then I'm sorry, brother."
Uriel's hand moved quickly from his back, and he advanced towards them with the handle of his angel-killing blade gripped firmly with regret.
Sam watched as the series of events seemed to unfold before him in slow-motion; Uriel's eyes landed on Dean, and that familiar glint of disgust flickered there. He held the blade high, and Castiel launched himself between the threat and…his mate.
Uriel brought the angel-killing blade thrusting downwards in one swift motion.
Sam barely felt in control of his legs when they began to move forward. He felt like he was watching from another point in the room entirely, from a viewpoint that was not his own, when he shouldered Castiel's body with all the force he could summon, catapulting himself into the path of destruction.
