The Importance of Being Purposeful

A/N: I've been rewatching the series from the beginning so naturally little ideas are popping up all over the place with one caveat: I'm channeling Chuck so I know how the series will go and my Muse is insisting on inserting serious AU machinations to some of the episodes as a result. Don't blame me; blame her.

Episode: 1.12 "Faith" – Dean is healed of a fatal heart problem at the hands of a blind faith healer. There is some dialogue from the show, but most of it comes from the fade to black.

Rating: T for some strong Dean language


"Guess when you have faith you can't just have it when the miracles happen. You have to have it when they don't."

She smiled softly, serenely, as if she were fine with the fact she was going to die and Dean might've believed her had his bullshit meter not been pinging wildly. It was human nature to retreat wholly from the idea of death if you weren't ninety and lived a full rich life. Layla was a few years over thirty with unrealized potential, so there's no way she could be this accepting of her fate.

"So, what now?"

"God works in mysterious ways." The soft touch to his hair was a nice touch because it allowed the bravery in her face to look real, but Dean could feel the trembling in her hand. "Goodbye Dean."

He couldn't just let her leave.

"You know, I'm not much of the praying type but I'm gonna pray for you." Dean really wasn't much of a man for prayer because, let's face it, God let this fucked up world continue rolling without interference, so why would he start now? But the thought was kind.

"Well, there's a miracle right there." Her tremulous smile 'bout broke his heart and he stood stock-still for a full minute after she closed the door in his face.

Snapping out of his daze, Dean rushed through the door and down the stairs, arm outstretched to touch Layla's.

"Don't go."

Her blue eyes were bleached gray with the force of her emotions.

"Oh sweetheart, don't do this to yourself."

"It's not fair! I've been faithful, I've gone to every fucking healing, and then you came along and BAM you're healed."

Dean looked helplessly at Layla, her face etched with misery. He couldn't explain to her why he was healed and she wasn't – it was purely by chance he'd gotten the nod from the blind faith healer. Well, more due to his smart ass comments than chance really. He refused to believe the old man's assertions he was a man of purpose with an unfinished job to do. Sure, he'd helped a bunch of people over the course of his lifetime, but he wasn't the only Hunter in the world so it wouldn't be skin off the world's nose if he died young (it was the Hunter's way after all).

Being healed was great, in a sense, but also bad because it proved there was something supernatural going on. And grateful for a second lease on life or not, Dean Winchester was a Hunter first and foremost, so naturally he had to go poking around to find out why. He cradled the delicate, dying blond in his arms, her tears dripping down his shirt, and silently cursed himself for not waiting until she was cured too. He still couldn't answer her mother's question of why he deserved to live and her daughter didn't – whether or not it was a supernatural cause, it seemed there was still no rhyme or reason to Roy choosing him to be up on stage to let the Reaper do God's Will (or what he thought what was God's Will because at his heart he was a faithful man, blind in more ways than one to his wife's perfidy).

Incredulity mixed with horror and a dash of awe: a fucking Reaper! He never knew they existed, which was silly of him he supposed, but who's to know what's real or not when dealing with supernatural lore? And the ability to harness its powers? He was still shaking his head over the temerity of that one.

Deciding this was a conversation better had in the relative privacy of his room he tugged on her arm and led her back up the stairs, feeling better once the door shut behind them. She willingly went into his embrace, looking up at him from the loose circle.

"Why you, though? You didn't even believe!"

He pressed his lips into her hair, cuddling her closer, but didn't respond. There was nothing he could say because it wasn't due to him he was cured, but the tenacious love of a younger brother determined to drag his older brother back from the brink. Sammy had been surprised at how stoic Dean been in the face of impending Death – Dean didn't have the heart to point out he'd been almost relieved for the cessation of Life because he was just tired. Fucking tired. Having Sam back with him was heart-lifting, but the ache of a separated family, the unending stream of supernatural occurrences, and the knowledge he would most probably die a horribly gruesome death…well, was it any wonder Dean had embraced a mostly painless deliverance? The unspoken thought too was that Sam could go back to his apple pie lifestyle without regrets.

"I dunno, sweetheart. I'm sorry you never got your chance to be healed. It sucks."

The big blue eyes turned up to him with a look capable of rivaling Sam's biggest most heart-rending Puppy-Dog eyes, and Dean felt a rush of feelings he wasn't able to completely understand: the usual Lust for anything female, mixed with Pathos for failing to save the pretty girl, and an overwhelming Hurt for her, as if something was slipping from his reach.

So he did what Dean Winchester does second best – first being an awesome big brother and third a terrific Hunter – and comforted her right out of her clothes into the sheets of his bed tumbled beneath his own naked self. Her desire for answers to the unanswerable mysteries of the universe was forgotten beneath the onslaught of this particular brand of Winchester Charm. In between oh god right there and more please harder, Dean sent up a completely un-for-Sam prayer to the Heavens he usually didn't believe existed, tagging the ears of several astonished angels who watched over different factions of mortals.

Dean Winchester, the Human Vessel for Michael, was usually concerned with three things: pie, his Impala, and Sam. Not necessarily in that order, but it did tend to depend on what time of day and how much his baby brother had annoyed him. He did not – under normal circumstances – deviate from this list as he tended to think anyone outside the Winchester circle (therefore un-needful for Hunter intervention) was on their own and could certainly kiss their own asses goodbye without any help from him, so for him to actually ( if only unconsciously) want to help a relative stranger was perplexing.

Castiel, Guardian Angel for the Human Vessel of Michael, was most disturbed by the prayer because he had only been dispatched to watch over him a mere week ago – in angel time – so he was the most knowledgeable for all things Dean Winchester, but nothing had prepared him for this.

He'd been present upon the elder boy's birth, subsequent childlesshood (even a Warrior Angel for the Throne of God winced at some of John Winchester's more assholish attempts to raise Hunter fledglings), and entrance into supposed adulthood (Castiel had overseen hundreds of thousands of mortals over the course of his Angel-hood and none had quite prepared him for Dean). He'd even heard all of the pleas Dean had winged upwards on different occasions, always wishing he could chastise the careless Vessel for his overuse of the Lord's name in vain, and for encouraging the females of his species to use it incorrectly as well.

This, however, was different. Dean was tapping into the part of humanity that set itself apart from all of His Father's Creations: unselfishness.

Castiel hovered over the now sleeping couple, pondering Dean's face, marveling as always at how young he looked while he rested. It wasn't always the case, of course, for he had terrible nightmares, more so when the younger Winchester had left the safety of the nest, but for once he looked twenty-six instead of a hundred-six-year-old man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Using angel-vision, Castiel could see the glowing brightness of good health in Dean, while the female had ominous dark patches throughout her skull and leaching downward in an inexorable slide of death. It wouldn't be too much longer for her as she'd only endured as long as she had because of her mother's faith in finding a cure. Dean's subsequent entrance into her life had both shaken her surety in her mother's protestations, but also hastened the cancer devouring her heath, as if it were a conquering army sensing the impending collapse of the outer walls to the castle.

She stirred a little, huddling deeper into Dean's embrace, and he in turn smoothed a hand down her arm with a rumble of sound. It invoked a moment of something in Castiel to see it: it was a familiar gesture he'd seen Dean do a hundred times for Sam during their growing years, and something severely lacking for the last five. Like a girl-child's teddy bear or tear-stained diary, Castiel was privy to all of Dean's hopes, fears, and wishes, so he knew how happy his charge was for Sam's return, anguish for being the cause of a young man's unnatural death, and impending sadness at how he couldn't help or save the woman in his arms.

It was the last which startled Castiel the most. Only three women had ever made an impact on his charge's life (his mother, a lovely journalist, and an astonishingly flexible yoga instructor), so it was uncharacteristic of Dean to care much about what happened to the females who passed in and out of his life. For so much angst over her – it caused his Guardian Angel pause.

And so Castiel did something he had never done before in the eons of his existence: he interfered with the path of possibility and pushed into the realm of probability by curing Layla of her inoperable tumor and subsequent bone mets. It merely took two fingers to the sleeping woman's forehead and the darkness oozed out of her much like exorcised demons leaving their meatsuits, but with a much better outlook for the host.

Dean - a light sleeper unless beaten, bludgeoned or shot and even then had one eye open and one ear cocked for Sam – awoke with a rush at the unfamiliar energy lurking in the room. He felt the presence of something nearby and was half way up with his favorite gun in hand, but couldn't see anything. Hunter instincts and awareness insisted there was a supernatural cause, but his limited mortal senses couldn't comprehend the celestial being standing mere inches from his body. His breath couldn't be seen so there wasn't a drop in temperature indicating a ghostly presence; the moon wasn't full so not were in nature; and the warm female lump beside him hadn't extruded rows of shark-like teeth so no vampirism in the offing. There were many other things that went bump in the night, but Dean was willing to forgo his unease because he couldn't actually pinpoint the cause and Layla had turned over, baring a portion of her naked body to him.

Castiel watched his charge for a few minutes, marveling at the strangeness of human copulation, then poofed from the room in a flap of unseen and unheard wings. It was not necessary to actually be with Dean all the time, though he did have a fascination for the way the eldest Winchester fledgling conducted his mortal life.

Dean left town two days later, leaving behind a satisfied and healthy young woman, who had indeed found her miracle through the prayer of an unbelieving yet still Righteous Man.