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Warning: This doesn't end well, so you may be better off reading The Littlest Elf instead.

"Just find a light, and switch it off" – Emilie Autumn, How to Break a Heart.

Opheliac Angel Chapter Seven (How to Break a Heart)

"What have I done?" asked Castiel in despair.

"I don't know what you mean," answered Balthazar too quickly to be believed, but somehow managing not to flinch despite his terror of his mercurial master.

It had been common knowledge for a while that Castiel had been consuming the souls of the human damned in ever increasing numbers. That Hell hadn't intervened only made it all the more obvious that there was some sort of very high-level demonic deal going on.

He'd also heard talk of a recent purge of the New Angelic Order, the gossip was that those angels who exhibited the most human-like emotion were targets for the General's death squad.

Balthazar had noticed that Rachel, Castiel's trusted lieutenant was now conspicuous in her absence and he wondered if his own time was now up. Part of him almost hoped it was, living under the constant fear of Castiel striking him dead due to his ever increasing personality and mood swings was difficult to cope with. Despite this, his perverse sense of humor still managed to find it amusing that he feared being killed by the one thing he truly loved, and given his origin he wondered if that made him a narcissist.

The others from the New Angelic Order had approached him earlier with their concerns, as it was generally recognized that although he was flighty and unreliable, Balthazar had a closer relationship to Castiel than anyone else, plus he seemed to be able to get away with saying the most disrespectful of things without dying. Well, so far anyway.

Balthazar had laughed in their faces - he had no intention of tempting fate. Again, he thought with a quirk of his lips.

"We need to have a strategy meeting to decide our next strike against Raphael," said Balthazar, trying to get his boss back on track.

Castiel looked up, his face tear-streaked. "I... can't," he intoned, "There are other matters that demand my attention." He disappeared with a sound like a panic stricken flock of birds trying to escape the room.

Balthazar frowned, he couldn't think of any other place that Castiel needed to be right now. He knew the Winchesters were busy with some monster mother nonsense that seemed to be important to them, but at the moment they were driving cross country and hadn't called. He'd threaded part of his consciousness into the Impala so he could keep a close eye on them - what with the brothers being invisible to angelic eyes. He was quite proud of himself, he'd got the idea from an old detective show, Who said you couldn't learn anything from crappy daytime TV?

He'd been keeping a close eye on the brothers in case they should try to retaliate for what he'd try to get Sam to do to Bobby, plus they were often a shortcut into understanding what was going on with Castiel. Although in recent weeks he'd had the strangest feeling that his boss was making a point of keeping them at arm's length for some reason.

He wondered if Castiel was self-aware enough to realize just how unstable he'd now become and if he was scared that the brothers would pick up on it. Either that or he was hiding something, but if so it wasn't something Balthazar was privy to, which was worrying in its own way. What could be so bad you wouldn't even tell your shady go-to guy?

In a sign that the universe was thumbing its nose and laughing at him, it was at that exact moment he received the migraine-inducing head pounding that indicated he was being summoned by someone.

Arriving at the site of the summoning ritual he groaned inwardly when he realized it was those damn Winchester brothers again, although he guessed it wasn't too unexpected since they seemed to have him on speed dial these days.

He groaned outwardly when they told him what Castiel had been up to.

Still, he wanted to hear it from Castiel himself. It annoyed him that the two little humans didn't seem to appreciate the immense pressure Cas has been under, or the effectiveness of the work that as General of Heaven he'd done to keep the world safe from total destruction.

Although as much as it pained him to admit it, they did have a point - there was little point in saving the world from the old corrupt order of angels if you ended up destroying it yourself.

Still it hurt to always be on the outside of his master's affections, and for Castiel's favored beings to be so dismissive of him and ungrateful for what they had. He flew away from the Winchesters mid-conversation to think about what he needed to do next.

He realized with a sick, sinking feeling that he needed to confront his master face-to-face.

~#~

Balthazar found Castiel in a clearing deep in a forest far from any habitation, just staring up at the night sky.

"Dean likes to look at the stars. We used to spend hours sitting on his vehicle and looking up at them together. It was very... companionable," explained Castiel.

Balthazar had a sudden, overwhelming urge to scream and rant at him in anger and frustration. How can I possibly be the creation of something so unworldly?

All of a sudden it dawned on him why Heaven had decreed that Castiel's upbringing should be so sheltered. Castiel was designed to be the perfect broken angel for any equally damaged Dean Winchester. He didn't know if he should laugh or cry at the stupid beauty of it.

"Gramps, I know you love us, but you've got to stop stacking the deck," he muttered in a quick prayer for guidance.

He turned to Castiel and called him several times before he got his attention, "Castiel, I need to know, are you in flagrante with the King of Hades?"

Balthazar laughed so hard at Castiel's wide-eyed, earnest denials, that for a moment he almost tipped over into hysteria himself.

Castiel at least had the decency to look shamefaced to be caught lying, as he confessed all and explained his plans for the souls in Purgatory.

"I'm sorry that I didn't tell you, but it was the only way," whined Castiel, "I need to know. Are you with me or not?" he asked, and despite the piteous look he gave, there was no mistaking the steel in his voice or the underlying current of violence in his words.

Balthazar had listened with growing horror at Castiel's plans and it took every ounce of his self-control to not let it show on his face.

"Oh, you know you may be certifiable, but fine. 'In for a penny, in for a pound'," Balthazar said, lying through his teeth, with a fake chuckle and a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. And of course if I say 'not', I'm dead. Right, it's time those Winchesters earned their keep.

~#~

"No, I don't care what that douche says, Cas wouldn't do that. He just wouldn't," argued Dean after Balthazar had departed.

Sam just stared at him with a level gaze.

Dean looked away, his mind a whirlpool of confused questions sucking him down into a morass of guilt and despair.

Why hadn't he questioned both Sam and Cas' sudden reappearance after such a long absence, and why had it taken him so long to notice their subsequent odd behavior?

Was he so blind that he couldn't tell he was surrounded by strangers wearing familiar faces?

Is it because he can't discuss his feelings and so he doesn't believe it counts when his instincts scream that something's wrong?

He remembered the moment when he'd looked at his brother and realized it was a stranger staring back at him from behind a Sam mask. It had scared him and upset his already unbalanced world, but he'd gone out, and although it'd been damn hard, he'd fixed it in the end.

Now when he looked at Cas it was like someone had taken an eraser to every aspect of the angel that Dean had known and... loved?

But he was out of ideas and he'd tried everything he could think of - he just couldn't get through to Cas. And that damn Winchester spine was just not made for bending, like with Sam and the demon blood, he couldn't back down on something he knew was wrong no matter how useful or necessary it might seem at the time.

Whatever it was Cas was doing, he had no idea how to stop it, but he wasn't ready to give up trying either. He would never stop trying, because Dammit, family don't stop with blood.

Later he reflected that in an odd way the worst thing was that Cas had still helped him get Lisa and Ben back, which meant that the old Cas was still in there somewhere. In Dean's mind this made the fault his, that he couldn't get through to his angel.

He'd looked at Cas' slumped shoulders, the dark smudges under the eyes and the air of abandonment and he wondered how he could've been such a self-absorbed and selfish bastard to have allowed it to get to this stage in the first place.

His minding jumping, he realized now that he loved Lisa more than he'd ever thought, but he loved her too much to inflict himself on her any longer. A forked-tongued voice in the back of his mind whispered that maybe he didn't quite love her enough to keep on fighting for her.

But with all the best will in the world it was just never gonna work and was only ever going to put her and Ben in danger. It wasn't the same with Cas - whatever it was between them, they were better together and he couldn't turn his back on his angel, not now he knew what the angel was going through.

Yeah, it was better all round that he'd cut his ties with the Braedens and let them just get on with their own lives. And if he was truthful with himself, he'd had more than his fair share of the apple pie life and it had turned out that it wasn't really to his taste.

He'd realized just in time that he preferred cherry.

~#~

Castiel received a sudden and urgent vision about Sam. He hadn't received a prophecy for a while and he'd forgotten how much it felt like a solid blow to the head.

Struggling to remain standing, he couldn't quite get a sense of what it was trying to tell him, other than a sense of urgency, so he tried his best to ignore it and just hope it would pass. After all, it wasn't as if he was welcome with the Winchester brothers right now.

The vision must have gone off searching for reinforcements, because it returned a moment later with a devastating migraine and graphic depictions of what was soon to become exploding brain matter - it was insistent that Sam's wall needed to come down. Now!

Castiel saw that it would appear to serve his purpose by effectively taking out one Winchester (albeit that he can foresee Sam will be fine again far sooner than seems possible), and thereby distracting the other. He felt a chill down his spine when he realized that Dean would never believe that he only did this for Sam's benefit, he would always think that Cas meant them harm.

Dean without Sam wasn't Dean at all, and Castiel was nothing if not a martyr for the cause.

~#~

Castiel sent out a mental call and sat back to wait, watching how the light interacted and played through the jar of blood he held in his hands.

After a whole attitude-laden moment longer than necessary, Balthazar appeared with the sound of a manic fluttering of wings.

"You rang?" asked Balthazar in his best Lurch impression, despite knowing that Castiel wouldn't get the cultural reference.

Castiel looked at him for moment, his expression cold, "Hmm. We have a problem, Dean is on his way. Here. Now."

"Really? How'd he even know where we were?" Balthazar said, doing his best to sound surprised, but not managing to sound very convincing.

"Apparently we have a Judas in our midst," Castiel said, putting down the jar of blood just out of Balthazar's reach.

"Ah, holy Hell. Who is it? I bet it's that bloody cherub, isn't it?" said Balthazar, his voice as tight as a drum, while trying and failing to sound breezy. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

"I don't know, but I need you to find out," said Castiel rising from his seat.

"Of course. Um, right away. Right away," he said with an almost audible sigh of relief, "Er, but what do you want me to do about Dean?"

"Nothing. I'll handle him myself," Castiel answered, his voice stiff as his turned his back on Balthazar.

Despite himself, Balthazar's heart dropped when he saw how broken and devastated his master appeared.

"Castiel? Are, are you alright?" he asked, his voice soft with sympathy and guilt at having caused Cas pain.

"First Sam and Dean, and now this. I'm doing my best in impossible circumstances. My friends, they abandon me, plot against me. It's difficult to understand."

"Well you've - you've always got little old me," Balthazar said, starting to reach out to comfort his master, his arm dropping as Castiel disappeared.

He looked down in shock at a sword protruding through his chest in an agonizing explosion of pain as he fell back into Castiel's waiting arms.

"Yes, I'll always have you," Castiel whispered as he held Balthazar in a tight but tender embrace while he reabsorbed the angel's grace.

Balthazar tried to speak, desperate to explain himself. There was so much he wanted to say, but in the end all he could manage was a single heartbroken groan while his eyes brimmed full with tears of longing and regret.

Castiel lowered Balthazar to the floor. As he stared down at the lifeless body of the angel he kept wiping at his face. He looked up for a moment at the ceiling, confused, wondering where the dripping water was coming from.

~#~

Author notes:

I think that with this chapter it's my own heart I've broken…